I would say that some of Tennyson's themes in this play deal with subject matter universal to the human condition. I would say one of the major ones is isolation. The Lady of Shalott lives in isolated existence, and in this, she lives most of her life vicariously, watching life unfold outside her tower but not participating in it herself.
It is interesting, with this in mind, to consider also the people outside her tower, who go about their lives, largely ignorant of the full depth of the Lady's plight. They live under the shadow of her tower and know her primarily as a voice singing from high within the tower. There is a disconnect here between the woman in the tower and the people living life around her. They might all of them know of her, but not one of them knows or understands the Lady herself, as a real, living person.
In all of this, Tennyson tackles universal themes concerning the suffering of individuals, as well as the disconnect that can emerge between the individual and the larger networks of people which surround them. (After all, consider that we are all of us ultimately locked within our own heads, unable to truly know the full depth of another person's experience.) The general experiences which Tennyson writes about were present long before he picked up a pen, and they have remained well into the present day.
One of the themes of Tennyson's poem is isolation—in this case that of the Lady condemned to perpetuate an essentially meaningless activity alone. The situation may seem remote from modern life, as it was as well from Tennyson's own world. But the nineteenth century saw many attempts by artists to recreate ancient or medieval myths and to find modern meanings in them. The mere mention of Camelot brings up a host of images of an idealized premodern England, but one which has relevance as a contrast to the new, industrialized society of Tennyson's time, and by extension, our own modern age.
The Lady of Shallot and her isolated existence can be regarded as symbolic of both the negative and positive qualities of the premodern world. Though Lancelot is also a part of that mythic world, the Lady seeks, through him, to break out of her prison. There are many analogies that can be established between on the one hand, this attempt to remove oneself from isolation, and on the other, situations in present-day life where individuals, or even cultural or ethnic groups, are marginalized or restricted in contact from the wider world and may seek to change their status in relation to that world.
It's possible that Tennyson intended "The Lady of Shallot" as merely a description of the lost world of English legend. On that level alone, the poem "works." But in his oeuvre as a whole, he concerns himself with the contrasts and, paradoxically, the connections between tradition and the new society of his time, which in many ways was just as jarring in its discord with the past as the events of our time in the twenty-first century are.
In Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott," a woman is cursed with having to stay in a tower where she weaves all day. She cannot look directly out at the world but must only view it through a mirror. She sits with her back to the window of her tower and sees what is going on reflected in the mirror's glass.
Eventually, the Lady of Shalott gets tired of her life of seeing only a shadow world in the mirror. She says, "I am half-sick of shadows." When she see Sir Lancelot in the mirror, she feels she has to look at life directly. She does so, and she is cursed with death.
This is applicable today because we often experience life as a "shadow" reflected through a television screen or computer screen. We don't actually get directly involved in life. We avoid this for the same reasons the Lady of Shallot does: it is risky. If we actually venture out into life head-on, we too could die.
The poem is meaningful for today because it asks a question that is still relevant: how do we choose to live? Do we live cautiously but only half alive, or do we jump in full force and take risks that may be fatal?
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