The reason you think I'm not answering the question is that I believe you have a faulty premise (that the works of Shakespeare are under copyright protection today).
Now you're either missing the point, or being intentionally obtuse.
No, the works of Shakespeare are not, but works that are 50 or 75 years old still are, even though everyone who wrote or created them are now dead. How is this useful to society? It's no different than if Shakespeare's works were still protected by copyright. And since we have now enacted perpetual copyright, nothing new will ever fall into the public domain from this point forward.
I believe they are not.