Shakespeare in Popular Culture

The Growth of a Shakespeare Vulgate

Robert MOSCALIUC
English-Romanian, 3rd Year
Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj – Napoca

64
 Motto:

“The play we watched last night,” Danby said. “Romeo and Juliet—why didn’t you like it?”
“It was rather horrible, sir. It was a burlesque, really—tawdry, cheap, the beauty of the
lines corrupted and obscured.”
“Do you know the lines?”
“Some of them.”
“Say them. Please.”
“Yes, sir. At the close of the balcony scene, when the two lovers are parting, Juliet
says, Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be
morrow. And Romeo answers: Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were
sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Why did they leave that out, sir? Why?”
“Because we’re living in a cheap world,” Danby said, surprised at his sudden insight, “and
in a cheap world, precious things are worthless. Shay—say the lines again, please, Miss
Jones.”
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be
morrow—”
(Robert F. Young, Thirty Days Had September)
No escape from Shakespeare there.1

“The answer to the question ‘Why Shakespeare?’ must be ‘Who else is there?” 2

Shakespeare’s major3 works have made a profound and lasting impression on later theatre,
literature and even language, an inkling which is felt even today as an authoritative energy
that feeds linguistic and literary fields within the realm of cultural constructs worldwide.
This is to a certain extent due to the fact that, as Ben Johnson put it, Shakespeare ‘was not
of an age, but for all time’. Our education as readers of English Literature has been mainly
Shakespearean, under the shadow of the Bard. His name has become synonymous with
the two words ‘great literature’. He seems to be everywhere: he is quoted and adapted
daily in newspaper headlines and in commercials for a wide range of products. In British
and American schools, he is the only compulsory author in the National Curriculum and
in Advanced Level English Literature. He even has a theatre company named after him.
When you enter Warwickshire the sign says ‘Warwickshire: Shakespeare’s County’. Even
now, after so many years, we are still speaking in Shakespearean terms, first of all because,
1 Maynard Mack, Everybody’s Shakespeare. Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, University of Nebraska Press (June 28, 1994), p. 4.
2 Harold Bloom, Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human, New York: Riverhead Books, 1998, p.1.
��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
In the article entitled “Give an Account of Shakespeare and Education, Showing Why You Think They Are Effective and What You Have Ap-
preciated About Them. Support Your Comments with Precise References,” included in Russ McDonald’s An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-
2000, Alan Sinfield discusses about which of Shakespeare’s works should be considered as a part of the canon and, consequently, important for
English Literature studies in schools and universities. Sinfield is, in a way sceptical when speaking about Shakespeare and the educational system
insisting on the fact that ‘Shakespeare remains as the great witness to the universality of literature experience, but his position is absurd, for he
is a representative of a category, of a theory, of which he is the only undoubted instance. […] Yet it is unlikely that Shakespeare’s significance as
a cultural token will diminish – it is too firmly established outside education as well as inside. […] The plays may be taught so as to foreground
their historical construction in Renaissance England and in the institutions of criticism, dismantling the metaphysical concepts in which they seen
at present to be entangled, and especially the construction of gender and sexuality. Teaching Shakespeare’s plays and writing books about them
is unlikely to bring down capitalism, but it is a point for intervention. ’ pp. 561-562.

Robert Moscaliuc 66
as Maynard Mack put it, ‘Shakespeare is the only writer in world literature who actually
comes close to belonging to the world’4. Shakespeare still has a sort of pervasive influence
on the English language and on Western and global culture. Many creative artists have been
inspired by his plays to compose works of their own. Familiarity with his works does indeed
allow an enhanced understanding of the music of great composers such as Mendelssohn and
Berlioz, Prokokiev and Britten, of paintings by Reynolds and Blake, of modern novels such as
John Updike’s Claudius and Gertrude and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, of the thousands
of films and television sitcoms that make allusions to Shakespeare, and of references to
him by politicians and journalists, preachers and comedians. He is a permanent presence
in our daily speech: almost all and sundry uses words like ‘flaming youth’, ‘to the manner
born’, ‘rich but not gaudy’, ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’, ‘it smells to
heaven’, ‘hoist with his own petard’, ‘the dog will have his day’, not to mention ‘life’s but a
walking shadow’ or ‘more matter with less art’, ‘lack-lustre eye’, ‘star-crossed lovers’ and
many more. But hidden under the cloak of social and, consequently, cultural changes that
wear the garments of a crisis in English literary studies, Shakespeare’s brilliance of thought,
meaning and language, his cognitive acuity, linguistic energy and power of invention were
oddly strained to put on a series of masks that are not suitable for such a persona. He is
no longer the ‘National Poet’ or the greatest author of verse that ever existed, no longer
an icon which represents the alleged High Culture. The Bard of Avon is nowadays a fruitful
spring of entertainment and wit that can be used in everything, be it advertising, commercials,
Sunday evening shows or low budget films. Using Hamlet’s famous line ‘to be or not to be’
in a commercial that props up cell phone services might not have the effects a producer or
the telephone company wants.
4 Mack, Everybody’s Shakespeare. Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, p.1.

Robert Moscaliuc 67
After being the object of ‘bardolatry’ (as George Bernard Shaw calls it), Shakespeare gradually
became a figure associated with matters of sexuality, racism, Marxism feudal propaganda and
chocolate commercials. Starting with the 50s, Shakespeare and his works have experienced
a prominent propagation of ‘new accents’ and methods (most of them radical approaches)
in the sense of a re-making of his writings from the viewpoint of transnationalism and social,
economical and political changes, but the significance and usefulness of this remaking has not
always been noticeable.

At a textual level, this distorted image of Shakespeare and his works has been shifting,
focusing on such issues as sexism (the feminist and psychoanalytical readings), Marxism,
political correctness, post-colonialism (New Historicism and Materialist Criticism), and many
more. But the questions that come to one’s mind are the following: what kind of Shakespeare
do we read? Was Shakespeare really sexist? Did he think of disrupting sexual difference, of
meaning and gender and how the two merge together? Did he think of being politically
correct? Was Shakespeare an ardent devotee of colonialism? Was he a mere product of his
age, a mingling of social forces? If so, why did not Marlowe, or other rival playwrights of the
age, create such masterpieces as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Macbeth’? Why were social energies more
productive in the son of Stratford than in Ben Jonson? After all, they shared the same social
and cultural milieu, the same disjunctions between ideas of affection and order. Instead, they
gave us fluent caricatures rather than men and women. Did he just try to pass on something
that would remain imprinted forever in the heart and thought of his readers and viewers?
Are we brilliant or was he brilliant before us?

Robert Moscaliuc 68
(Post-)modernism brings to the fore a new Shakespeare, a no-fear Shakespeare, a Shakespeare
that speaks not only the language of his age but also the language of our age. He can be
western movie Shakespeare, emo Shakespeare, tomato sauce Shakespeare and chocolate
Shakespeare. The Bard of Avon can also be used instead of the Coca-Cola banners that are
placed at the entrance of a fast-food corner stand. Shakespeare is as famous as the Coca-
Cola Company is. Psychoanalytical Shakespeare is the perfect patient who speaks in verse,
feminist Shakespeare talks about the role of women in a patriarchal world, new historicist
Shakespeare informs us about his age and its customs, commercial Shakespeare wrote
Othello for chocolate advertisements, emo Shakespeare wrote tragedies for youngsters to
read on the tube, hyper Shakespeare wrote interesting quotes so that one may use them
on blogs and internet journals. He wrote so that one may say ‘to be or not to be, that is
the question’ without even knowing the title of the play; he wrote Hamlet so that one
may use his name for garage rock bands or cigar names. There is a pocket Shakespeare for
everyone. ‘Shakespeare is the writer you need! Always fresh, at all times for your taste!
Always re-fashionable! Buy your Shakespeare Today! Buy your Shakespeare here! Limited
edition!’What we now name ‘Shakespeare’ is not only the author of Hamlet but also an
unalleviated and almost incommensurable string of modifications operated on the written
text and the text into performance over the centuries. After all, one must admit that the
richness of Shakespeare’s plays is a cause of great diversity of interpretation and perspectives.
Nevertheless, the observer still knows this author as being Shakespeare himself despite
these amendments (re-editing, interpretations, productions, adaptations and re-writings
of all kinds). This proves that the Shakespeare text is responsive to action upon it, that
it cooperates with adaptation, and offering numerous possibilities for transformation and
usage. Accordingly, Shakespeare is both one and many, formed but still forming.

Robert Moscaliuc 69
To out-Shakespeare Shakespeare

After taking into consideration such enquiries and brooding over the possible answers that
can be given, another major issue comes to the fore. After all these years, critics still cannot
decide whether Shakespeare was a drastic republican or a diehard royalist, a neo-Platonist
or a materialist, a Christian or an atheist. How is it that Shakespeare, who is made accessible
through endless performances worldwide, is so impossible to pin down? Surely this mystery at
the heart of our culture is worth our full reverence. One possible answer to these questions
could reside in the originality of Shakespeare’s works manifested as individual endeavour
and self-sufficiency. In The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom sees originality as ‘the great
scandal that resentment cannot accommodate’ especially when talking about Shakespeare.
Actually, Bloom goes further by saying that ‘Shakespeare remains the most original writer
we will ever know’ despite the fact that many critics considered him a writer that takes into
consideration the myths of the past and re-writes them from another perspective (Greene’s
‘upstart crow’). Bloom’s vision of Shakespeare is rather epistemological: he begins with the
remark that Shakespeare’s utmost accomplishment is the creation of uniquely undeniable
figures that not only change in the course of the plays but also have the capacity to alter
themselves through the power of their innermost reflexive consciousness. Such characters,
which are ‘free artists of themselves’ – as Hegel called Shakespeare’s personages – do not
appear as the leading energies of a narrative, or as rhetorical figurations, or as reflexes of
Shakespeare, but more as autonomous self-regulating beings. Thus, these characters become
not images of a certain social or cultural background, but mirrors to our own conscience:

Robert Moscaliuc 70
 Shakespeare... suggested more contexts for explaining us than we are capable
of supplying for explaining his characters... (He) so opens his characters to
multiple perspectives that they become analytical instruments for judging
you. If you are a moralist, Falstaff outrages you; if you are rancid, Rosalind
exposes you; if you are dogmatic, Hamlet evades you forever.
(Bloom, 1994: 64)

In addition to this, a common reader would agree that the school of the ages has taught us
that it is originality which kept Shakespeare on the buoyant line and this is why he is still the
centre of the western canon. Originality is Shakespeare’s aesthetic supremacy (Bloom, 1994:
64). He is at the heart of the canon and so many thousands of books have been devoted to
him that even specialists find it difficult to keep up with the literature relating to just one
aspect of his work.

In the end, we can all consent that originality makes an author universal, which offers
possibilities of being interpreted in many ways over the centuries: the same process can be
connected to such names as Homer, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dante and other major authors
of world literature. Shakespeare’s unique strength lies in the capability of his works to
be ahead of any conceptual and imagistic approach, ahead of any of us, enclosing us in his
thought. Whatever viewpoint we choose in order to assess Shakespearean characters, we
find that, through their capacity for self-exploration, they have got there before us. In this
sense, Bloom states the following:

You cannot illuminate him with a new doctrine, be it Marxist or Freudianism

or Demanian linguistic scepticism. Instead, he will illuminate the doctrine,

Robert Moscaliuc 71
 not by prefiguration but by postfiguration as it were: all of Freud that
matters most is there in Shakespeare already, with a persuasive critique
besides. (Bloom, 1994:25)

In other words, Shakespeare’s masterpieces not only allow the application of certain theories
but contain at the same time their deconstruction. ‘Or, to vary my point’, Bloom continues,
‘a Shakespearean reading of Freud illuminates and overwhelms the text of Freud; a Freudian
reading of Shakespeare reduces Shakespeare, or would if we could bear a reduction that
crosses the line into absurdities of loss’. (Bloom, 1994: 26)

Bloom also insists on the fact that during the ages there have been certain changes at the
level of aesthetics, namely, each age has brought a new perspective of literature. However,
these new perspectives are not necessarily positive:

Shakespeare, whose aesthetic supremacy has been confirmed by the

universal judgement of four centuries, is now “historicized” into pragmatic
diminishment, precisely because his uncanny aesthetic power is a scandal
to any ideologue. (Bloom, 1994: 23)

The argument against these hardly noticeable aesthetic changes is that these changes do
not come from the community, but rather from class struggle. It is the community which is
awarded ‘leisure for meditation’. The aesthetic authority or, in other words, the aesthetic
power is a result of the ‘energies that are essentially solitary rather than social’ (Bloom,
1994: 37). As an example of forces that try to undermine Shakespeare’s aesthetic value,
Bloom recalls new-critics, Foucault-inspired new-historicists, neo-Marxists, feminists,

Robert Moscaliuc 72
structuralists, psychoanalysts, deconstructionists, Afro-centrists, and other trends, each
claiming sole possession of the truth (they actually believe in no truth at all, or in relative
truths & values) when speaking about Shakespeare’s works, although their contribution is
scarcely noticeable. The author of The Western Canon groups all these under the generic
name of the School of Resentment.

Shakespeare and the toothless terror of fashion

In the Victorian age, Shakespeare was the beneficiary of a type of widespread popularity
based on the fact that performances of his plays were attended by all levels of society
and more and more people started to have Shakespeare’s plays on their shelves beside
the Bible and other authors of world literature. One could say that there was a wide
consumption of Shakespeare, and there is a good explanation for the use of the word
‘consumption’. In such terms consumption refers to the fact that people did not necessarily
think very carefully about what they consumed. They did not filter out individual meanings
implied in the succession of words they heard, but rather appreciated the wholeness of the
play. This was probably due to the amalgamation of his plays with other forms of popular
culture. Rather than being performed on their own, as an icon of elite culture (high culture)
unavailable somewhere else, his plays were performed with dancers, mimes, jigs, interludes
and other similar things. Despite the fact that the plays might be performed as they are, they
were usually accompanied by lighter fare specifically designed for amusement and leisure. In
those times people saw the Shakespearean text as entertainment. They actually identified
themselves with certain characters from the plays, they were aware of the human aspects

Robert Moscaliuc 73
that were displayed, they could absorb the tragedy, they could perceive the pain and the
pathos. Accordingly, they took from Shakespeare what they needed, namely entertainment,
and perceived the Shakespearean text as the mechanism of amusement. Nevertheless, this
popularity automatically implied a process of cannibalization which chewed and swallowed
the original text into other texts which deviated from it in a barbaric manner. However,
as the nineteenth century hastened to its end, such practices started to disappear and
the plays were performed alone, as a sort of dry dose of high culture to be taken as drug,
healthy but never agreeable. Consequently, in the twentieth century, Shakespeare becomes
separated from popular culture, as opposed to the widespread popularity he enjoyed in the
nineteenth. Yet, he continued to be popular, theatres were still full. However, he becomes
the image of the unfamiliar, no longer part of a culture that is accessible to every member
of the society. The Bard of Avon becomes the sole possession of the educated portions of
society, too complicated for the low segments of the public. In a sort of turnaround of the
nineteenth century mode of presenting Shakespeare, the twentieth century has sliced the
plays as well as the legend of the bard, and introduced them into a wide variety of popular
culture forms. From ads to films, pieces of Shakespeare hang within other works, sometimes
motivated, sometimes as pure ornaments triggering a sort of recognition. In such situations,
the question that comes to one’s mind is what sort of purpose Shakespeare serves in these
forms.

Robert Moscaliuc 74
The unconscious levelling and the NFS (a.k.a. No Fear Shakespeare)

The death of Shakespeare – or at least the death of integral Shakespeare – in popular culture
meant the entrapment of his figure and works in the alleged high culture and the narrowing
of interest when it comes to studying Shakespeare. Nevertheless, he remained the symbol of
the genius and this is why he started to be more and more widely used in movies, commercials
and other types of industries. The results are fairly predictable. The assimilation of the
Shakespearean text gave birth to extreme deviations from the original. For instance, in the
economic climate of the mid-1970s and 1980s a sort of deviant Shakespeare film emerged.
These types of films did not have the intention of being firmly connected to the original text
but they were rather experimental and independent works by directors from an Art School
tradition and not from a theatrical one. As an example, Derek Jarman’s Tempest released
in 1979, and The Angelic Conversation (1985) created surprising and even upsetting images on
videotape and on low-grade film. In addition to this, they also appropriate Shakespeare for
gay susceptibility and the spirit of idiosyncrasy. Thus, Jarman’s Prospero is a morose figure
in a gloomy and sinister house scrawled with astrological scribble. His Tempest finally ends in
dissolution. Another example is the film directed by Michael Almereyda released in 2000, in
which the ghost of Hamlet’s father is seen first by the use of surveillance cameras. The movie
continues using all sorts of modern props in contrast with Shakespeare’s out fashioned and
extreme metaphorical language. Thus, at a certain moment in the movie the king’s ghost
disappears in a Pepsi machine.

If we are to think on a more theoretical echelon, nowadays we witness a process of unconscious

levelling. Namely, the Shakespearean text is translated into a contemporary discourse which

Robert Moscaliuc 75
appeals to the modern reader viewer by shocking the eye with excessive disruptions and
remakings. The sole goal of these remakings is that of bringing a lost simplicity back, and to
recreate a meaning which is apparently lost for the modern reader. This process of levelling
derives from the need of manufacturing a Shakespeare for everyone, accessible to everyone,
always fresh and available. The unconscious levelling also refers to a type of contemporizing
old texts and situations, namely it levels the difference between the old and the new by
cutting scenes and lines in order to make the Shakespearean text appropriate for the modern
taste. Thus, instead of the well known lines from Hamlet

To be or not to be? That is the question –

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?5

the modern reader gets the following:

The question is: is it better to be alive or dead?

Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way?
Or to fight against all those troubles
By simply putting an end to them, once and for all?6

Barnes & Noble’s website entitled Sparknotes offers this so-called ‘no fear Shakespeare’
for free, demonstrating to young learners of English literature that Shakespeare poses
5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.i.

6 Sparknotes, No Fear Shakespeare, and URL: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/ (visited on 2009/03/27).

Robert Moscaliuc 76
no threat to their understanding. Consequently, one could no longer speak of a kind of
Shakespeare which is accessible only to the high culture, but rather one could speak about
a Shakespeare which is available even for uneducated persons. The unconscious levelling is
visible when the distinction between high culture and low culture becomes ludicrous and is
no longer a distinction. By virtue of his familiarity (both through his prominence in academic
environments and in the kind of fragmented representation I have spoken of in the previous
chapter), he allows a link to be created between high and low/ popular culture. Due to this
familiarity, the alleged myth of Shakespeare can be easily understood by a large portion of
the public, therefore creating the illusion that the text and the public can be familiar with high
culture. In other words, Shakespeare is used to bond the entertainment-oriented members
of low/ popular culture with the representatives of high culture. The quest of providing a
Shakespeare for the masses is of course a notable quest and deserves our full reverence, but
it also implies a risk if the original text is absent in the process of reading/ understanding.
These types of rewriting involve a transaction between an ancient text and a modern agenda.
The risk is that very often it is the contemporary issue that seems more important, as the
plays are refocused towards modern issues. Through this sort of ‘translation’ of meaning an
important part of Shakespeare is lost, namely the immortal part. Shakespeare is first of all
famous for his vocabulary and his peculiar way of combining words with powerful imagery in
a constellation of remarkable metaphors. One may easily notice that the translated piece is
a barbaric reduction of the very beauty of language Shakespeare uses in his works. Because
of this reduction the figure of the bard loses its peculiar aspects and becomes a part of the
ordinary. The idea is that whatever we consume it is no longer The Shakespeare but a series
of alterations put together in a melting pot of resentment.

Robert Moscaliuc 77
 Shakespeare loved ice-cream but hated the mob

Nowadays, Shakespeare becomes a mass-market item

and he is often absorbed as a gesture towards or claim
of affiliation with high culture. In this sense he becomes a
sort of celebrity even though he is – as a person – dead.
In other words, he becomes useful as a brand. Because
he and his plays are extensively known to almost any type
of public the commercial industry uses him in order to
get the message across the borderline of culture. Thus,
if one uses the language of Shakespeare, or the imagery
of Shakespeare, he or she will get more recognition from
the target market. Consequently, people started using
Shakespearean lines and situations in almost everything:
chocolate and ice-cream ads, patent medicines, ketchup
ads, they even made calendars and almanacs filled with quotations. In Nevada for instance,
several gold mines were named after Desdemona and Ophelia. Writers started to use ideas
and write sequels to Shakespearean texts or even rewrite some of his plays. Everybody is
familiar with such texts of literature as Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead (1966), W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern (1974), John
Osborne’s A Place Calling Itself Rome (1973) or Edward Bond’s Lear (1972) and many others.
One could also find Shakespeare used in dime novels which aim at a young audience. He
appears as a character, as a muse, as a means of advertising the product. One could also find
William Shakespeare’s profile on hi5 and write comments on it.

Robert Moscaliuc 78
The commercials in which Shakespearean lines, metaphors and
situations appear are numerous. Many of them make usage
of Yorick’s skull, but there is a clear misuse in each of those
commercials. One of them is a commercial for Doritos (a
triangular shaped type of flavoured tortilla chips) in which two
ferrets – one of them being Horatio and the other Hamlet –
have the famous discussion about Yorick’s skull. Their discussion
follows the Shakespearean pattern until one of the ferrets
realizes that what they have found is actually a Dorito and not
Yorick’s skull. The misuse is clear in this case because, after all,
how could anyone mistake a chip for a skull (despite the fact
that we could suspend this counterargument by thinking that
the ferrets were actually incapable of making the difference).
Another example is the commercial for a sports channel (rugby
league) in which Yorick’s skull is used as a rugby ball. Again,
as in the case of Doritos, Hamlet’s soliloquy with the skull in
his hand goes as in the original text, but at a certain moment
Hamlet is interrupted by one of the actors (probably Horatio)
who suddenly thinks that he is actually playing rugby and uses
the skull as a ball with which he scores. Similar to this, there
is another commercial which advertises the famous Heinz
Ketchup. The viewer sees a young boy performing Hamlet’s part
and uttering the well known soliloquy ‘to be or not to be’ in a
sort of r&b/ hip-hop manner. The audience is extremely bored

Robert Moscaliuc 79
and at a certain moment somebody throws a Heinz ketchup bottle at the young actor. The
voice of the raisonneur comes at the end of the clip and says that Heinz uses real tomatoes
thus triggering the fact that there was a reason why the audience mistook the bottles of
ketchup for real tomatoes. Another Heinz commercial displays a man who is sitting at a
table with a hamburger in front of him on a plate. The question which bothers his mind is
if he should wait for the thick ketchup to come out of the bottle or use a butter knife for
that. The solution comes from another personage who says that a squeeze bottle would be
more efficient in such cases.

Other types of commercials use not his characters and lines

but the Bard himself. This is the case of one commercial
which advertises Klondike ice-cream. In this clip Shakespeare
himself is asked to write a TV sitcom in exchange of a Klondike
bar. At first, the answer is clear: “Methinks not!”, but after
having tasted the delicious ice-cream bar (“no room for a
stick”) Shakespeare finally accepts and writes the requested
sitcom.

Another example is represented by an ad for SIM Global Education Company, in which a

god-like voice speaks about the options one has when building his/ her future. Thus, the
voice talks about two ways of fabricating a future:

Robert Moscaliuc 80
 How to make everyone love your work? Option one: the
William Shakespeare way. First, find yourself a good pair of
tights. Then, show off your bald head. Write comedies with
men in tights. Write tragedies with men in tights. And write
histories with men in tights. Then, become a pigeon target.
Or, try option two: the SIM way.

A third example of commercial is that which advertises a type of writing instruments called
The BIC Banana (“which comes in ten expressive colours”). In this case the viewer comes
across the never-ending quest of finding a meaning in what Shakespeare was trying to say.
The explanation which is found regards the fact that Shakespeare did not have a BIC Banana
in order to make himself clear by writing in a simpler way:

For years, Shakespeare struggled to express himself, and

today there are still people trying to figure out what he was
talking about. ‘To be or not to be?’ what does it mean? If he
had a BIC Banana he would have written ‘I am, take it or leave
it!’ You could express yourself with a BIC Banana. You could
write, sign, draw, mark and go crazy. You don’t find that kind
of expressiveness in a ballpoint. In a ballpoint you would get ‘wherefore art thou
Romeo?’ in a BIC Banana you’re going to get ‘Romeo, you keep yourself nice, let’s
get married!’

The image that this type of commercial creates is in a way a distorted image of Shakespeare.
For instance, somebody who has not heard of Shakespeare could think that this ‘individual’

Robert Moscaliuc 81
did not have the proper means to express himself and thus has written something which
is incoherent and incomprehensible to the modern reader. Secondly, because Shakespeare
chose to write ‘to be or not to be’ instead of ‘I am, take it or leave it’, that does not mean
that he had difficulties in expressing what he wanted to render in his text. In addition to
this, the aesthetic value of the original text would be lost and Shakespeare would not be
Shakespeare. Moreover, one must admit that, no matter how brilliant he was, Shakespeare
wrote in the language of his times and we as readers must take into consideration the fact
that maybe, in those times, it was easier for the public to understand the meaning of ‘to
be or not to be’ instead of ‘I am, take it or leave it’. Again, as I have mentioned before,
the rewritings that we produce today are always seen through the filter of contemporary
problems and we have the tendency to insert our problems in the original text. The risk
which is implied here is predictable, namely such rewritings offer the possibility of seeing
what we want/ need to see.

Another example is represented by an advertisement for cigars. Each of these adverts

presents the viewer with a situation in which something bad or unpleasant happens. In one
of these commercials, Queen Elizabeth wants to step into the street but cannot do that
because of a puddle. Thus, what is probably Sir Walter Raleigh sacrifices his
coat to save the queen from getting her feet wet. The problem is that when
she steps on her newly ‘paved’ way the puddle seems to be deeper than it
first appeared and the queen disappears into the waters of the puddle. Sir
Walter Raleigh is arrested and imprisoned for conspiring against the queen.
While he is in prison he lights a cigar and enjoys the beneficial smoke. The
conclusion is that ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, the mild cigar.’

Robert Moscaliuc 82
The strange case of Hamlet, Lear, and the insane asylum

Shakespeare’s plays have been a continuous source of ideas not only for commercials or for the
mass consumption society, but also for psychiatrists who found in his texts all sorts of tests and
treatments for the people that were considered insane. For instance, in the 1820s, the English
Physician Sir Henry Halford turned to a well-known scene from Hamlet in which Hamlet visits
his mother’s chamber and confronts her. And in the middle of the scene Hamlet kills Polonius
who is hiding behind the screen. This was considered by Halford a sign that there is something
wrong with Hamlet. After he has killed Polonius, Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father and
he begins to talk with the ghost. Consequently, his mother asks him who he is talking to and
he replies that he is speaking to his father. He is on the point of leaving when his mother says
to him:

This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation, ecstasy
Is very cunning in.7

What Gertrude is trying to say is that she thinks Hamlet has gone mad and started having
hallucinations (mad people often talk to ghosts and imaginary creatures). Hamlet’s answer is as
follows:

Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
7 William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, act 3, scene IV.

Robert Moscaliuc 83
 And I the matter will reword which madness
Would gambol from.8

Actually, what Hamlet is trying to say is that in order to demonstrate that he is not mad, he
is going to rephrase what he has just said, an impossible thing for those touched by madness.
In other words, he wants to demonstrate that he is in possession of his faculties. Halford
thought that this was an excellent device and consequently established a procedure by which,
if somebody had written a will which was contested, one could simply ask the person who
wrote it to rephrase the will, and if he could do it in an accurate way the will would be legally
binding. The procedure had a tremendous success especially in the United States, until asylum
superintendents realised that something was wrong with the procedure. They reached the
conclusion that correct rephrasing did not mean that a person was sane, and that it is only
an indication that he is able to function competently at that particular instance. Thus, the
procedure was scrapped and no longer used.

Another example is represented by the usage of Shakespeare’s King Lear in trials. For instance,
if somebody was trying to demonstrate that a person had gone mad – usually an elderly person
who had never shown manifestations of mental illness until the past year, at which point this
person wrote a will or another important document which was contested by somebody – the
psychiatrists used the example of Lear, who himself did not show signs of madness until very
late in life.

8 William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, act 3, scene IV.

Robert Moscaliuc 84
 Hamlet 2 and Rock Me Sexy Jesus

Coming back to the idea of deviational or ‘contemporizing’ Shakespeare, Andrew Fleming directed
a film which was released in the U.K. at the end of February 2009.The movie is entitled Hamlet 2 and
tells the story of Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan), a recovering alcoholic and failed actor, who
has become a high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona. After a series of failures in the theatrical
world, Dana has an idea which will later be seen as his most brilliant idea.With the help of his students
he performs what he calls a sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, under the name of Hamlet 2. The play
itself faces a double reception because people are equally horrified (considering it disrespectful for
Christians, as Jesus appears in the play as a surfer who has a sexy body) and fascinated (observing
the philosophy which stands behind what is happening on the stage). The play revolves around the
usage of a time machine which offers Hamlet (and Jesus) the possibility to save his mother from being
poisoned and Ophelia from drowning. Beside these matters Hamlet and Jesus have the possibility to
go back in time and mend their troubled relationships with their fathers.Thus, the play ends with an
emotional scene in which both Hamlet and Jesus forgive their fathers for the wrongs that they have
done. Moreover, Dana’s play emphasizes the process of contemporizing and at a certain moment in
the movie – when several parents come to stop their children from performing on the stage – one
of the personages says that if Jesus would come on earth again, He should adopt a different style
in order to be of interest to the modern world. This is also the case with Shakespeare: in order to
appeal to modern tastes, his plays should adopt a new style. Consequently, Hamlet 2 takes shots at
gays (the personage that plays the part of Laertes is homosexual), Christians (Jesus is a sexy surfer
who rocks and kicks the devil’s ass), Latinos, Jews, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Dana Marschz’s play is essentially psychoanalytical, as the movie illustrates how aspects of the

Robert Moscaliuc 85
author’s life (Dana Marschz) are reflected in the text. In addition to this, Dana finds a sort of
explanation for Hamlet’s insanity by rendering the fact that he had an uneasy relationship with
his father, the king, and that is why he continues to see his ghost. Another aspect refers to the
fact that Dana, by rewriting Shakespeare’s play, has taken the tragedy out of the tragedy. By
the use of the time machine Ophelia is saved from her tragic death and finally marries Hamlet.
The play ends with the line ‘I forgive you, father!’ uttered by both Hamlet and Jesus. The movie
in itself is not a great achievement but the irony with which the matter is treated saves it from
kitsch and absolute nonsense.

Everybody’s Shakespeare

“Some authors indeed are dead, but not William Shakespeare.”9

In Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom insists on the fact that Shakespeare
created not only characters, but also ‘real people’. Thus, characters like Ophelia, Hamlet,
Macbeth, Rosalind, Cleopatra or Falstaff live not in the text – as opposed to Foucault, who says
that the text is the limit of all human action – but outside the text. Hamlet, for instance, is one
of the few characters that live outside the text, outside the theatre. Hamlet means something
even for those who never read Shakespeare’s play, or as Jan Kott said, Hamlet ‘is rather like
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.’ We somehow know that she is smiling even though we have never seen
the picture in the original. When we say ‘Hamlet’, we refer not only to Shakespeare’s play, but
also to all the critics, writers, poets that wrote about Hamlet, even though there are hundreds
9 Harold Bloom, Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human, New York: Riverhead Books, 1998, p. 14.

Robert Moscaliuc 86
of them. Being real people, they live among us: we, as his readers, have something in common
with his characters. We like Shakespeare not because he had an outstanding vocabulary and a
great talent for metaphors and other figures of speech, but because his works are like a mirror
which reflects not how his characters are and how they act but what we are. ‘If your Falstaff is a
roistering coward’ Bloom writes, ‘a wastrel confidence man, an uncourted jester to Prince Hall,
well, then, we know something of you, but we know no more about Falstaff. If your Cleopatra
is an aging whore, and her Antony a would-be Alexander in his dotage, then we know a touch
more about you and rather less about them than we should.’ If your Shakespeare is a feminist
who wanted to emphasize the feebleness of the female body in a dominant patriarchal society,
or a result of his age, the spokesman of Elizabethan society, or a keen supporter of colonial
England, or a writer that wrote about the nothingness of this world, then we know more about
you and rather less about Shakespeare. It is not fair criticism anymore, but rather oblique
criticism or writing about you instead of Shakespeare.

Robert Moscaliuc 87
REFERENCES

Bloom, Harold, 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt
Brace.

Bloom, Harold, 1998. Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books.

Drakakis, John (ed.), 2002. Alternative Shakespeare. Second edition. Routledge.

Eagleton, Terry, 1986. Rereading Literature, William Shakespeare. Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Kott, Jan, 1964. Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc.

Mack, Maynard, 1994. Everybody’s Shakespeare. University of Nebraska Press.

McDonald, Russ (ed.), 2004. Shakespeare, an Anthology of Criticism and Theory: 1945-2000. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing.

Wilson, Richard and Dutton, Richard (eds), 1992. New Historicism and Renaissance Drama. Longman.

Robert Moscaliuc 88