Shakespeare as a person is actually pretty boring. Like, we know he existed and made a living off of writing and theater and... not much else? I guess he’s interesting in the same way Jane Austen is interesting; we know a limited amount about his life, so people just make up shit wherever they see fit. The era in which he wrote was interesting, of course, but that’s a slightly different thing to study.

As others have said, people seem to really dislike Shakespeare because they haven’t seen any of his works performed. They’ve also, probably, had a lackluster education in reading and literature. Shakespeare isn’t old English. It’s so much closer to modern English than Chaucer, for example. People complain about how they don’t understand it, as if the groundlings watching Shakespeare’s plays understood every word that was said. The emotion comes through in the action and the stagecraft. You read Shakespeare after you see it if you want to appreciate the language, but you go to see Hamlet because there’s a ghost and people get murdered. You watch Titus Andronicus for the blood, Midsummer for magic, Othello for treachery and betrayal. They are just good stories, well told.