I wish I had seen this post before.Anyway, I must speak, for this is a topic I ama quite fond of.
I agree with you, @honeydue. To some extent, it is fear, and some of it is really justified. Works that are complex and hard to synthesize for Bloom, Booth, and Elliot, to name some of the most relevant contemporary scholars, are not to be taken slightly. Nonetheless, I think we may get closer to Shakespeare if we take a moment to get to know his “art.”
“Nobody else but Shakespeare had created so many different "individualities" in the history of literature,” like Johnson said. And because of this, I think, every person who reads his plays or sees them performed on stage might feel identified and turn irrevocably a fan. But first, due engagement must occur (it is a rule in education; we teachers know for a fact, there’s no learning without motivation, and you need to learn so you can understand Shakespeare’s work. Only afterwards can you get to enjoy it).
The first time I had to teach a class on Shakespeare, we had to study his plays. The class was full back in 2005—when youths were not fleeing the country yet, and we could worry about fictional drama instead of real drama—; then, we could cover most of them. But before I dared to start discussion, I wondered how I could motivate them, for the plays are hard to swallow; and besides, like you say, they are meant to be seen instead of read. And guess what, I started with the sonnets (even though they were not in the program for that semester). Once I got them to know the heart of the poet, the rest was much easier than I thought; once they learned about the sensitiveness behind the frightful name and apparently, ultra-cryptic language, they also learned to give themselves and The Bard a chance.
After people discover the ingenuity of Shakespeare they realize how much he is in our present: in the books we read, the songs we listen to, even in soaps. The effect is quite similar to the one caused by discovering the Quixote. People say, “Oh, so that is what this came from…!” It’s like magic.
You have made me want to watch those movies. Half of them I had not watched before.

Thanks for promoting Shakespeare’s works, which are Cultural Heritage of Humanity ☻♥