Good afternoon everyone! I just finished listening to the new Mumford and Sons album, and the first song includes lines from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Just proves that literature is everywhere.
Feel free to post your own examples as you find them this summer!
Ms. Stokes
I am reading the Shakespearean play Taming of The Shrew. I have had to stop myself from trying to relate it to Ten Things I Hate About You. It isn't very similar in my opinion. But this is an example of how Shakespeare cannot be lost because so many people create movies of his work with a modern twist. Or leave the plays untouched but put in such famous people like Mel Gibson. The possibilities of what you can do with Shakespearean plays are endless.
ReplyDeleteLiterature is most definantly present everywhere. One example of this I have encountered several times this summer is the appearance of famous literary quotes on billboards along highways. One specific example I saw this summer was on my way to visit gettysburg college a couple of weeks ago. I saw a billboard that used the famous quote "to be or not to be", but instead had it say "to eat or not to eat" on it alongside an advertisement for a very fatty looking bacon cheeseburger. Obviously that was not the original intention of the quotes meaning, but it had an obvious connection to shakespear's famous quote from Hamlet.
ReplyDeleteAlso literature is present in society by the simple fact that books are made into movies that much of society pays money to see.
- Ashley W
Good afternoon Ashley and Nichole! Thanks for posting. I agree with both of you and it's funny how I'm always discovering different references to some of my favorite literary works in everyday advertising, songs etc....
ReplyDeleteNichole---Definitely Shakespeare is ALWAYS going to be re-interpreted because his works are universal. This is why we have so many updated versions of his plays...Some change the time period, but keep the Elizabethan English (Leo DiCaprio "Romeo and Juliet") and some adaptations change the language and time period, but keep the plot (10 Things I Hate About You and She's the Man). Out obsession with Shakespeare continues with this fall's "Anonymous" which is about the Shakespeare authorship question.
Ashley, certainly Shakespeare's "To Be or Not to Be" is the most copied and utilized quote. I've seen it used for fast food ads, like the one you mention, beer ads, clothing ads, movie ads etc...I think if you asked everyone in America who wrote "To Be or Not to Be" they would probably know even if they had not read "Hamlet."
Thanks and hope to hear from everyone else soon. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Ms. Stokes
Shakespeare is a big part of our society, whether we realize it right away or not.I do know that there are many popular movies out there that use some of Shakespeare's text. Last night I was watching Law and Order, or some other crime show of that extent. Two families were having a feud, and had been at each others throats for very many centuries. Yet, one boy from one family, fell in love with the girl from the other family. Their love was a secret, and even the friends thought the guy was crazy. Romeo and Juliet anyone? Shakespeare is everywhere! And the themes of his plays are universal, and are used again and again. In kids movies, like the Lion King representing Hamlet, in tv shows as I just mentioned, or in the world around us, like Ashley mentioned above me.
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