What's So Special About Shakespeare?

This question is often asked, especially by disgruntled students forced to sit through dreary "Shakespeare lessons" at school; and some very eminent writers, including Tolstoy and Shaw, have questioned his reputation. And yet people go on reading, watching and performing Shakespeare more than any other dramatist in the world.
Ultimately, what is special about him is perhaps that, if you study all his work, you get the impression that there was no human experience – no state of mind, no predicament – that he could not understand and portray. At first glance it might seem impossible that someone writing 400 years ago could have so much to tell a modern audience; but people today are still finding their personal, social and political situation mirrored in Shakespeare. In fact he is even used on management courses!
However, it is probably in his portrayal of our deepest and most private emotions that Shakespeare still speaks to us. As Bernard Levin said, "No other writer…has brought us so close to the heart of the ultimate mystery of the universe and of man's place in it."