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Six Reasons Shakespeare Remains Relevant 400 Years After His Death
Six Reasons Shakespeare Remains Relevant 400 Years After His Death
USC professor helps to put the Bard’s influence into perspective on the upcoming anniversary of his passing
BY Michelle Boston
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
That is the question that has passed over the lips of countless actors playing Hamlet in the last four centuries on stage and screen. It’s also a
question that people in almost every country and in any language know quite well. We can thank playwright William Shakespeare, whose reach is
extensive.
In April, people around the world will celebrate the Bard’s timeless works on the 400th anniversary of his death. There will be performances of his
plays, readings of his poetry and new publications dedicated to analyzing his prolific and time-honored text.
“Shakespeare reveals a different face to different cultures and different people at different times,” explained Bruce Smith, Dean’s Professor of
English and professor of theater at USC.
“When the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work was published in 1623, seven years after his death, Ben Johnson, who was a fellow writer, noted that
Shakespeare was ‘not of an age, but for all time.’ That statement can be taken two ways: that the meaning of Shakespeare’s work is always the
same or that it is always different. The second interpretation is the one that has been borne out.”
Smith is editor of The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare , which will be published Feb. 11 by Cambridge University Press. Written
for general and academic audiences by an international roster of almost 300 contributors, the guide boasts more than 2,000 pages exploring both
Shakespeare’s world and the influence of his works on the world.
Topics range from the language and initial reception of Shakespeare’s plays and poems to studies of his works in popular culture, new media and
advertising, as well as their influence on film, religion and fine arts.
Here are six reasons (among countless others) explored in the guide why Shakespeare remains an icon 400 years after his death.
1. You quote Shakespeare on a regular basis and don’t even know it.
Shakespeare’s influence on the English language runs deep. For instance, if you search the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — the definitive record
of the English language — Shakespeare is often identified as the sole user or first user of a word or phrase, according to Charlotte Brewer who
authored the guide’s chapter on “Shakespeare and the OED.”
“The more of Shakespeare’s words you look up, the more you discover that, time after time, according to the OED, he turns out to have used
language in wholly individual ways or [more often] to have originated usages that subsequently became established in the language,” Brewer
wrote.
If you have ever said “It’s Greek to me,” suffered from “green-eyed jealousy,” “stood on ceremony,” been “tongue-tied,” “hoodwinked” or “in a
pickle,” you are quoting Shakespeare.
“Despite the claims of anti-Stratfordians,” he explains, “the evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of William
Shakespeare is abundant and wide-ranging for the time, more abundant than the comparable evidence for most other of his contemporary
playwrights.”
Kathman is one of several independent scholars without an academic appointment recognized as authorities on Shakespeare who contributed to
the guide. Smith noted that their inclusion “is yet another sign of Shakespeare’s universal appeal.
However, Erin C. Blake explained in the guide’s chapter on “Likenesses: Prints and Portraits,” that the editors of the First Folio were friends and
colleagues of the Bard’s. She wrote: “They knew what he looked like and would not have accepted a portrait that differed wildly from the man they
remembered.
In Samuel Johnson’s preface to The Plays of Shakespeare (1765), he wrote, “His characters … are the genuine progeny of common humanity,
such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find.”
For those who would like to explore Shakespeare’s legacy more extensively, the print version of The Cambridge Guide will be available at the
Doheny Memorial Library. The online version of the guide will be accessible through USC Libraries in the coming months.
Smith also will celebrate the anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing with the publication of his seventh book in June with Shakespeare | Cut:
Rethinking Cutwork in an Age of Distraction (Oxford University Press). Shakespeare | Cut, which looks at the creative ways snippets of the
Bard’s work have appeared on stage, in video games or on YouTube, is an elaboration of the Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures that he delivered
at Oxford University in 2014.
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