I'm interested in this only in-so-far as I'm quite shocked that so many people care. I am a huge Shakespeare fan myself, but I certainly don't expect everyone else to be and I start all my Shakespeare units by telling my students this. I explain to them why his works are around (as in, ALL AROUND US) 450 years later, and some of the reasons why I love it, and I invite them to come on a journey with me through the unit. I ask them to have an open mind, be willing to have some fun, and give something "hard" a shot. I tell them they might even like it (but they're not required to).
I'm always pleasantly surprised when the end results are feedback ranging from "yeah, it wasn't so bad" to "I LOVE this guy, this stuff is amazing" or "you made me love Shakespeare", or "my brain hurts and I like it". I do get the occasional "I still hate it" and that's cool too, but it's rare.
Anyhow, the point is that anything can be done well or done poorly. That's why I like this Washington Post article about the recent Glass controversy because I think it focuses more on the right things that can (and do) go wrong, rather than whether or not "Shakespeare sucks".
I also really enjoyed this Globe and Mail interview with the two directors currently staging different versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Stratford. I've seen Chris Abraham's production, and while I had some issues with small portions of it, overall I think it was a highly entertaining and smart take on things. The fact that (as the interview says) some American school groups walked out just baffles me. My students adored it!
Shakespeare doesn't have to be grand or proper (whatever that means) to be good. Shakespeare doesn't suck. He's a dead playwright. There are words on a page left from when he was alive. They are beautiful words, cleverly put together, but they require a whole team of people - actors, directors, designers, producers, etc. - to bring them to life.
The very best Shakespeare I've seen lately has been the simplest. The local theatre company did a 5-person production of Macbeth in the park and it was wonderful. The young actors dealt with the distraction of planes, helicopters, sirens, sea-dos, traffic, and rude patrons plus they delivered excellent performances that conveyed an actual understanding (not merely a recitation) of the language, something I've found severely lacking with some of the Stratford actors in recent years.
So the lesson is, I guess, the performance of Shakespeare should be kept simple, but the critiques should never be. Ira Glass, your pronouncement that "Shakespeare sucks but John Lithgow was amazing" means I'm just not that into you. And neither is the rest of the internet.