Does talking like Shakespeare mean drowning out others?

For the second year in a row, the marketing Prosperos at Chicago Shakespeare Theater got Mayor Daley to proclaim April 23, the day traditionally observed as Shakespeare's birthday and the anniversary of his death, "Talk Like Shakespeare Day." "Chicago is recognized as the home of not only 'Da Bulls and 'Da Bears, but also 'Da Bard," reads 'Da Mare's not-at-all-embarrassing official proclamation (PDF). Meanwhile, CST has unleashed actors in Elizabethan garb to roam the city's tourist hotspots; the official Twitter feed has Will checking in from the Belmont el station (pictured), the Art Institute and the Hancock Center.

Speaking of Twitter, playwright Kristoffer Diaz—whose Welcome to Arroyo's opened this week at American Theater Company and whose The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity was named a Pulitzer finalist last week, just as I profiled him in the magazine—is tweeting a pretty compelling case against the Bard today, suggesting that our overallegiance to a single 446-year-old writer crowds out other voices, particularly in school curricula. "i will never be convinced that we need AS MUCH shakespeare as we actually get. theater is a living form," he writes in one tweet. What do you think? Is theater overly devoted to Shakespeare?