Some Supporting Quotes from the Epilogue of Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Hamlet

I found some phrases I really like in the epilogue to the book Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Hamlet which is "Cheating Death: The Immortal and Ever-Expanding Universe of Hamlet" by Maria M. Scott.

The first of these great quotes is:  

Perhaps more than any Shakespearean text, Hamlet is embedded in our collective cultural consciousness long before we actually encounter the gloomy Dane in the pages of his play. The question "To be or not to be?" is as over-determined as the direction to "have a nice day." However, the original text has been reinterpreted and retransmitted so many times that what we receive sometimes only vaguely resembles the original message.

This passage is exactly in line with my thesis that Shakespeare has seriously influenced our culture, both serving as an inspiration for new ideas and as a commonly known set of ideas that can be easily referenced.

Another great quote follows close after that one "If the dilemma facing Shakespeare scholars today is that there's just not that much more we can say about him, surely that dilemma is doubly pronounced in relation to Hamlet." This dilemma is one that I sympathize with, since I too was trying to say something about Hamlet, and there is so much already said that anything else just seems superfluous.

There's one more quote from this epilogue that I like and that echoes and reinforces my own ideas about Hamlet and society is "we have the opportunity to show that Hamlet remains relevant as a cultural icon and continues to evolve." Of course, this book is written for teachers as an aid for them, but I think it applies just to the simple studying of the play. "We have the opportunity to [see] that Hamlet remains relevant as a cultural icon and continues to evolve" and that it continues to evolve both in how we view the original text and in how we adapt it and make use of it for new creative performances and works.

So, I like the epilogue to this book, it agrees with me.

Hamlet Shows Shakspeare's Long-Lasting Cultural Effect

Pondering the Definitions of Popular Culture, Again.

What is Popular Culture? The definition in “The Introduction” by Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes to Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture seems like a good definition to me “cultural products created of the people… for the people.” But who are “the people?” In this introduction they say that “citizens and yeomen were frequently were frequently classed together as ‘the middling sort of people’, divided between town and country and it is these groups rather than those who ‘have no voice nor authority in our commonwealth as Smith puts it, who would usually have been referred to as ‘the people’.” To me, this is an insufficient definition of “the people.” Everyone, from the Queen down to “those who ‘have no voice nor authority’” are people and are therefore part of “the people.” Sometimes it is useful to look at the different aspects of a culture, the types of literature that make it into textbooks, films that win awards and praise while being perhaps a little too aware of their own artsy-ness and other praise-able qualities, art that is found in museums, to the generally enjoyed books, movies, and TV… and other aspects of a culture that are less snobby and may or may not have plenty of their own merits. Shakespeare wrote for and was appreciated by the snobby elite and the groundlings and the in-betweens of his own day, and he has returned (if he ever left) from the realms of the snobby elite to being accessible and enjoyable to all of the people from the snobby elites to the couch potatoes. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet has been an inspiration and a source of cultural reference points for the people that have gone before us and it still is for us, the people, now.

Shakespeare in the Sky

Most of the planets, constellations, and heavenly bodies we see in the sky through our telescopes are named after the gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines of the old classics, mostly the old Roman classics. But there are also some heavenly bodies out there that are named after Shakespeare's characters (Pope's too, but who cares?). The planet Uranus has 27 moons, or satellites, named Cordellia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Mab, Belinda, Perdita, Puck, Cupid, Miranda, Francisco, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberan, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, and Ferdinand. Most of these moons are very very small.

But they are there, and the fact that they were named mostly after Shakespearean characters shows that while most heavenly bodies are named after the old classical traditions, Shakespeare is part of an important tradition too.

This picture is one I got from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site, which has lots of lovely astronomy pictures and information.

Ophelia, Her Death as Mad and as Picturesque as Our Imagination Paints It

Discovery in Unrelated Reading

Today I was reading Brothers Karamazov for one of my other classes (Honors 202, a Civ 2 class, called The Bible in Western Literary Tradition) and I was surprised to find a Shakespeare reference. At the bottom of the first page and the top of the second in Part One, Book One, there is an interesting passage

And so she died, entirely to satisfy her own whim, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. If this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would have never taken place. This is a fact, and there probably have been a few similar cases in the last two or three generations.

All the World's a Stage, and Everybody Knows That

After a lengthy discussion with my mother about how common some of Shakespeare's phrases have become in our culture I did a google search for the phrase "all the worlds a stage" and with the advanced option asked it to exclude the word Shakespeare. I got 11,600,000 results. The hits were as varied as can be. There were blogs (like Joanna's but not hers), theatre groups, and ad for World of Warcraft, a book titled "All the World's a Stage", a NASA article about the movement of dust across the world, an announcement of an art exhibit for a museum, random news, a wiki-page for a book about Tom Cruise with "All the World's a Stage" as part of the title, and that's not even all the types of things that showed up on the first two pages. High-brow, low-brow, its a phrase that has permeated every level of our culture.

The painting is a James Christensen painting called "All the World's a Stage" and is one of my favourite paintings. I even liked it before I found that it also happens to be the first image that shows up when you search that phrase.

I also noticed today this line is very close and most likely the inspiration for the description Prakash Raj, one of the Indian actors I follow on Twitter, has for himself "The world is also a stage."

Dr. Who, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture

I like connections. I like connections between the literature and culture of Shakespeare’s time, and his work, and I like finding how people have played with Shakespeare’s work ever since. One of the most fun connections between Shakespeare and popular culture that I’ve run across recently is the Dr. Who episode “The Shakespeare Code.” Dr. Who is an important part of modern British pop culture, and Shakespeare has been an important part of the culture for a long time, seeing the episode play with the quotes and allusions to Shakespeare's life and works (as well as to other cultural references) is great fun whenever there's a new reference that you catch.

Wikipedia has a long list of the references to Shakespeare and his work in their article on “The Shakespeare Code” episode.  Some of my favourite references are described here

There is a running joke throughout the episode in which the Doctor creates an apparent ontological paradox by inspiring Shakespeare to borrow phrases that the Doctor quotes from his plays. Examples of this include the Doctor telling Shakespeare that "all the world's a stage" (from As You Like It) and "the play's the thing" (from Hamlet), as well as the name Sycorax from The Tempest. However, when Shakespeare himself coins the phrase "To be or not to be", the Doctor suggests he write it down, but Shakespeare considers it "too pretentious". In a different version of the joke, the Doctor exclaims "Once more unto the breach", and Shakespeare initially likes the phrase, before realizing it is one of his own from Henry V, which was probably written in early 1599.

 I feel like I ought to be doing some analyzing here, but I'm not quite sure how you analyze something like this. I do see that Shakespeare taking up so much time in a popular modern TV show episode is both proof that people still, to some degree, appreciate Shakespeare and also that seeing the Shakespeare references gives them a new way to appreciate and remember his works.

The Comic Relief skit is another occasion of these two aspects of British culture intersecting, on a different TV show.

A Little Something

I've been watching some Dr. Who, a very funny British Sci-fi series, recently, and so one of my roommates showed me this very funny comedy skit with two of the main actors from that show and it's just chock full of Dr. Who and Shakespeare references. So, I thought I'd share it with you.

What I Think of....

...When I Think of Romeo and Juliet.

I've never read Romeo and Juliet before, but I feel well acquainted with the story. Of all of Shakespeare's plays, this one seems to have worked its way most thoroughly into many different levels of culture.

The first thing I think of when I think Romeo and Juliet is "cliche".

The second thing I think of is a movie called The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns. Despite the frame story dominated with annoying humans, I enjoyed this imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling.

Then I think of West-Side Story and the Hindi version Josh (I've only seen the Hindi version).

While thinking about Indian references I think of a song in the first Telugu movie I ever watched, Bommarillu.

Also, Romeo and Juliet was also the play the characters in the second Hindi film I ever watched, (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) were studying in their English class.

As far as books I've read... Romeo and Juliet is also referenced in the second Twilight book, New Moon. She actually makes an interesting question "what if" question based on the play.

Another book I've read which is fairly clearly inspired by Romeo and Juliet is Son of the Mob. Where a mob boss's son falls in love with the daughter of a police chief (or perhaps it was a detective, I don't remember anymore).

But this is not even a significant fraction of different places Romeo and Juliet have gone. It's just a few of the first things I think of when I think of Romeo and Juliet.

The Merchant of Venice, Star Wars Edition

I’m thinking about writing a fanfiction story using the basic plot of The Merchant of Venice, altered slightly, and adapting it to the characters and setting of Star Wars, with Obi-Wan having Antonio’s part, Anakin having Bassanio’s, Padme having Portia’s, one of the handmaid’s having Nerissa’s, and perhaps Asajj Ventress having Shylock’s... etc. It could be fun. It might even work.