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.)
