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Shakespeare had a unique, even superhuman, gift for creating characters who spoke in a voice ever true to that specific person, whatever the age, gender, or status in society. He did that while simultaneously expressing the person's voice in poetry of such special beauty that now, more than 400 years later, we are still moved by his art and still use his phrases, his words, and his neologisms as part of our everyday modern speech.
Beyond that, Shakespeare's sensitivity to developmentally age-related conflicts and feelings is so keen and so accurate that when reading or watching Shakespeare's plays, his words continuously open fresh insight apt to the observer's pleasures and fears of the moment. Using Twelfth Night as my play in point, I have described the play's power to provide me with fresh understandings that had been beyond my reach until I heard his words:
Ever since I emerged from childhood during high school years, Twelfth Night (1971) has been for me a standard alongside which I could measure my growth, like the doorpost where my parents had earlier measured my changing height. I first found the play, a classroom assignment, pleasing, never suspecting I would go on through the years to see it performed many times, to read it repeatedly, and always find in it new levels that would mark and measure for me the alterations of my own unfolding life. It seemed as if the play extended its reach along with me as my life progressed. (Poland 2018, p. 153)
The play addressed my age-related inner emotional issues, and Shakespeare's writing brought me new emotional freedom by extending my limited insight.