Seeing Shakespeare

Has every post-Shakespearean work been plagiarized?

Let's talk about that.

They hate each other at the beginning, but over the course of an hour, or a few hundred pages, they fall in love. Sound familiar? That's because it's literally every Katherine Heigl movie. Ever. It's also the storyline of practically all movies in the “Rom-Com” genre. But what's lesser known, is that this now-cliché plot was created by the great bard himself, William Shakespeare for his comedic play Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice and Benedick find themselves thrown into numerous situations that eventually lead them to professing their love for one another despite having sworn to loath each other forever at the beginning of the play. Another example of this storyline showing up in more contemporary works is Pride and Prejudice (yes. Jane Austen is contemporary). Elizabeth and Darcy face the same storyline in the romantic tale that is constantly referenced by everyone… or maybe just me. But I don't think it's unreasonable to say that more people know about P&P than they do about Much Ado. So, why is that? Why is Shakespeare saturated in a multitude of mediums and people don't even realize it? How is it even possible that Shakespeare single-handily fine-tuned arguably the most used and well-loved plots to ever be heard?

First, I think we should look at what Shakespeare has done to answer the last question. He was able to tap into the fundamentals of human emotion. What motivates us, what angers us, what saddens us, what arouses us. Not only did he layer his characters with depth worthy of the complexity of the human mind, he was also able to manipulate his audiences' emotions to think as his characters think. He pushed boundaries, he was raunchy and political and controversial. To put it simply, he has mastered humans. No one could surprise him, Shakespeare was essentially the greatest psychologist that ever lived.

Now onto the Shakespearean works that seem to pop up everywhere. Before I start, I want to say that yes, people can be original. But their originality will in some way stem back to Shakespeare. So I guess what I'm saying is no, they're not original. #notsorry. But I digress, I've already discussed a few examples in literature where Shakespeare can be seen quite obviously (actually, I've only discussed one, but there are also five Twilight movies, stuff happens). Let's take the most obnoxiously large and ridiculously inflated movie we can think of for our next example – The Avengers. More specifically, Loki (and no, it's not because his face makes me swoon, he has really good character development and I swear, he's just misunderstood). Loki is probably more Shakespearean than Shakespeare himself. He was lied to as a child (mistaken identity), believed his birthright was to be king and went for it (grab for power), and is the antagonist for not one, but two Marvel movies. He's a “Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits” album personified. The beauty of Shakespeare is that everything is laid out for you. Sure, there's some cryptic, figurative language and a few ghosts but most of it is pretty straight forward. The reason he is so straight forward, is because he's relatable, or in other words, identifiable (which doesn't actually sound like a word but it is, I Googled it). Readers can identify that the emotions that course through them are the same that course through his characters.

Now I could write a whole blog post about why people watch movies, or read books, or actually turn on reality tv shows, but I'll make my explaination short – relatability (this one isn't actually a word, but it serves my point). At their core, television, books, and movies are all people responding to things. So why would people want to watch or read about that? Because it's relatable. Because they can observe how others react. We are all creatures of imitation. I learned a ton from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example if I ever see a suspicious ring, you can be sure as heck I'm going to throw it in a fireplace and hope some Elvish shows up. But on a serious note, that's why we study themes in school, right? To learn and make sure we understand what an author or director or screen writer or Snooki is trying to convey through their reactions to circumstances (although in Snooki's case, it's probably what NOT to do in most circumstances – kids, stay in school).

Now, what were we talking about?

Oh, yeah. Shakespeare.

So, no. Obviously not every work following Shakespeare's works are plagiarized. But it would do consumers good to take a moment and inspect the different media they are bombarded with each day and reflect on its connection to Shakespeare, because I can almost guarantee there will be one. It can be like a fun game that will annoy most people around you. But that's also the major problem, most of the time, people don't think about what they're absorbing because of how much they are forced to absorb from commercials, billboards, iPhones, etc. They don't recognize the wonderful roots that are planted in stories. Don't be one of those people, embrace your intelligence fellow readers, and comment below with your thoughts, jokes, concerns, disagreements, and basically anything you feel like saying. Nothing brightens my day than a nasty internet argument that's partial discussion but mostly abuse. (Kidding – stay classy people.)