But if rereading Shakespeare through a Modernist lens allows his works to become Modernist, what stops one from just reading all texts through a Modernist lens and allowing all of them to be considered worthwhile under high-culture rules?
Levine does discuss Shakespeare, at length, but doesn't really make an effort to hypothesize why changes to ideas of highbrow/lowbrow culture happened, his main point was that changes happened at all. So going to Levine isn't much help in coming up with approaches for explanation.
Some other thoughts I have though on why Shakespeare is highbrow today, though:
In the 19th century there wasn't the same sense of ownership/copyright/inviolability-of-art, and people made very free with their Shakespeare to alter as they saw fit to make it more appealing to what was wanted at that time. Whereas today there's a tendency towards the way of thinking that changing an author's words would be sacrilege. (Helped along, probably, by corporate pressures on copyright shaping our culture's view on the ownership of art. Not that copyright is bad, but the hugely extended copyright period is pretty weird and honestly stifling.) So when you have the freedom to change a text to fit its context, it can have a broader appeal, perhaps.
Also the English language has changed a lot since Shakespeare's time, and the 21st century is far enough removed from the 19th century in terms of language usage that it makes an appreciable difference in how comprehensible Shakespeare is. So Shakespeare has to be high culture today because you have to be educated to be able to comfortably make sense out of what the characters are saying, when probably it was far more penetrable to someone 175 years ago.
no subject
Levine does discuss Shakespeare, at length, but doesn't really make an effort to hypothesize why changes to ideas of highbrow/lowbrow culture happened, his main point was that changes happened at all. So going to Levine isn't much help in coming up with approaches for explanation.
Some other thoughts I have though on why Shakespeare is highbrow today, though:
In the 19th century there wasn't the same sense of ownership/copyright/inviolability-of-art, and people made very free with their Shakespeare to alter as they saw fit to make it more appealing to what was wanted at that time. Whereas today there's a tendency towards the way of thinking that changing an author's words would be sacrilege. (Helped along, probably, by corporate pressures on copyright shaping our culture's view on the ownership of art. Not that copyright is bad, but the hugely extended copyright period is pretty weird and honestly stifling.) So when you have the freedom to change a text to fit its context, it can have a broader appeal, perhaps.
Also the English language has changed a lot since Shakespeare's time, and the 21st century is far enough removed from the 19th century in terms of language usage that it makes an appreciable difference in how comprehensible Shakespeare is. So Shakespeare has to be high culture today because you have to be educated to be able to comfortably make sense out of what the characters are saying, when probably it was far more penetrable to someone 175 years ago.