Week #16: April 22 – April 30
According to the Population Reference Bureau, since the beginning of mankind roughly 50,000 years ago, more than 108 billion people have ever been born. And most of those people lived unremarkable lives. A few however permanently changed our history with their influence on our philosophical, religious, scientific, humanitarian, business, or literary beliefs and practices. Reaching back thousands of years ago, Socrates, going against the moral, intellectual and political norm of the time, changed the way we think. Instead of looking for answers from others, he encouraged people to seek answers from within, to question one’s own morals and motives leading to a new philosophical outlook on learning. Then several hundreds of years later, Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha converted people during their lifetime from a polytheistic culture to a monotheistic culture, and they continue to influence billions of people with their core values in life including beliefs about our origin and our afterlife. From a 50,000 year perspective, the more modern developments from Galileo Galilei, who concluded that, contrary to Catholic belief, the earth rotated around the sun, and Charles Darwin, who hypothesized that our species originated within the animal kingdom, both drastically changed the way we see and interact in the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up and demanded equal rights for all, changing the humanitarian outcome for all future generations. And the inventions over the past couple of centuries that have changed the way society does business is awe-inspiring: Thomas Edison harnessed nature’s electrical power and showed us how to control it in our homes; Henry Ford introduced the mass-production line of automobiles, making them affordable for the average person and changing the mobility of a culture forever; Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web which now offers unlimited knowledge at our fingertips. And speaking of knowledge, one person in the literary world has influenced more future writers than anyone else ever combined. Who is that literary icon, who also happens to have had a birthday this week? Here’s a riddle to help you figure it out. What do the lyrics of Taylor Swift and 2Pac have in common? What about those of Metallica and Elton John? The Beatles and Iron Maiden? Dire Straits and Sting? The answer? Shakespeare! Yes they are all musicians in a wide-range of genres but they all have at least one song with lyrics influenced from this one literary icon. That person is William Shakespeare. Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” and the opening arpeggio on Dire Strait’s album Making Movies both reference Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet; and Shakespeare’s portrayal of greedy and power-hungry kings such as King Lear and Macbeth make their way into the Beatles’ album The Magical Mystery Tour, Metallica’s song “King Nothing” from their album Load, and Elton John’s song “The King Must Die.” Even the prophesizing witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth make their presence known in 2Pac’s debut album 2Pacalypse Now with their chant “something wicked this way come,” and heavy metal icon Iron Maiden includes the prophesizing words from Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” in the title of their top hit “The Evil that Men Do.” So far Shakespeare’s sadder and darker themes have influenced all these lyrics, but that’s not always the case. Shakespeare also wrote 154 sonnets, many with lighter themes highlighting new love and nature. “Sonnet #130” includes the line ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” which award-winning singer Sting in part borrowed for the title of his album Nothing Like the Sun. And these only represent a few of the modern lyrics Shakespeare inspired; if we also took note of the quotes, poems, novels, plays, movies, and counties, cities, and streets that Shakespeare also inspired, then our list would quickly turn into a gigantic book. So how did one person influence thousands, perhaps even millions? It certainly wasn’t his childhood background. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23, 1564 – we think. You see, we know very little about this man who changed the literary world forever. We know the church baptized him on April 26, 1564, an event that traditionally took place three days after birth. We know he was one of eight children born to his father, a leather merchant, and his mother, a land heiress, and although they lived wealthy for a time, by William’s childhood, their wealth had declined rapidly. We assume he attended the local King’s New School, which would have taught him the classics. But so far nothing extraordinary. As an adult, we know that at the age of eighteen, he married a pregnant Anne Hathaway – eight years his senior. We also know that William and Anne had three children: Susanna and then twins Hamnet and Judith. Unfortunately, at the age of eleven, Hamnet died for reasons that leave us in the dark. We know that Shakespeare goes off the radar for almost a decade and then reappears as a respected partner in the prestigious London acting company called Lord Chamberlain’s Men. By the age of thirty-three, he had already written fifteen plays and could afford to buy New House, the second largest house in Stratford. Within two more years, he and his partners built their own theatre called The Globe. Unfortunately, during a “Henry VIII” production in 1616, a canon shot during the performance caught the theatre’s thatched roof on fire and the entire theatre burned to the ground. And remarkably, it took a whopping 383 years to reconstruct The Globe, just a few blocks away from the original theatre. Prior to this reconstruction, surprisingly nothing existed in London to honor Shakespeare or his plays. And speaking from experience, when I saw “Titus Andronicus,” there’s nothing quite like watching a Shakespeare play in the same recreated outdoor ambiance of The Globe theatre on the banks of the Thames River in London. And lastly, we know that at the age of fifty-two, he was interred at the Trinity Church on April 25, 1616, leading us to believe that he died on April 23 – his birthday, but leaving it a mystery as to how or why he died. And as fate would have it, both of Shakespeare’s daughters had children that did not survive into adulthood, thus forever ending William Shakespeare’s line of ancestry. In all, in addition to the sonnets mentioned above, William Shakespeare wrote a total of thirty-seven plays, ranging from histories, tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies. So why does his writing, especially his plays, still hold such a dominant place in the literary canon? Why does even modern society still compare all other plays to Shakespeare’s plays? The answer may be that the themes of his plays - appearance vs reality, order vs chaos, life vs death, fate vs free-will, youth vs wisdom, ambition vs fortune, love vs hate, forgiveness vs violence, and ambition, evil, guilt, and conscience – transcend any time period and every culture. Whether you’re an elderly Chinese gentleman laying on his deathbed full of regrets during the 1700s or a young Afghanistan woman unhappy in an arranged marriage during the 1900s, you can find at least one Shakespearean play that connects with you, that speaks to you, on a deeper level. So does his ability to transcend time and cultures justify his inclusion on the list of people who changed history? Well if that reason is not enough, then the fact that he alone introduced more than 1,700 original words, such as lonely and frugal, and phrases, such as “breaking the ice” and “heart of gold,” into the English language – words and phrases that generation upon generation continue to use both in their writing and in their everyday speech – should definitely catapult him to the top of that list. Because of his influence, he is (perhaps) unknowingly ingrained in our psyche. Everyone has either seen or read a Shakespeare play, visited a place named after one of his creations, read a book by an author that Shakespeare inspired, or spoken one of the words he introduced. Not many people – ever – have had that kind of an impact; so I definitely say he has earned his spot on that list, and his name should certainly be near the top! And so now that we come towards the end of April and celebrate the great Bard’s birthday, I would love to return to his birthplace to pay my respects while visiting one of the many homes and properties associated with him, or even stand in front of his tombstone, that curses any man that may attempt to move his bones, and offer a moment of silence in gratitude for the impact he has had on so many lives throughout the centuries. But until I visit Stratford-upon-Avon again, it is with anticipation that I await the warmer weather of the summer months when Kentucky’s Shakespeare in the Park returns for their 69th continuous year of offering free performances to entertain and inspire audiences, so that I can attend and bask in the productions of his theatrical masterpieces. Well done William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, and Happy Birthday! In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Pettinger, Tejvan. “100 people who changed the world.” Biography Online. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.biographyonline.net/people/people-who-changed-world.html “Pop goes Shakespeare: the Bard in Modern Music.” British Broadcasting Company. 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2018 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4nwSNRbP6DhyV79KgT94LTp/pop-goes-shakespeare-the-bard-in-modern-music “William Shakespeare Biography.” The Biography.com. 5 August 2017. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323 “William Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Influence.” 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.williamshakespeare.net/
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AuthorLet me introduce myself. I am Julie Blasofsel. While teaching high school English for the past dozen years, my appreciation for works of literature increased after visiting several locations associated with the authors and their texts. You can't help but feel the presence of Ralph Waldo Emerson as you stand on the shores of Walden pond, the despair of Henry Longfellow as you stand in his house, the loneliness of Edgar A. Poe as you descend into his walled basement, the candor of Samuel Clemons as you reach his men-only study. My goal is to gather information and relate my experiences about these places of literary significance in this literary hive. Please add your literary travel experiences and recommendations. Together we can bring these authors to life and light the flame of passion for reading in others. Enjoy! Archives
October 2018
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