What space festival and political correctness have to do with William Shakespeare

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

William Shakespeare - be it a real person or an image, a screen, as many now believe - influenced European culture very strongly. And not only in terms of literature and cinema (one of the most actively screened authors). Some of the consequences of his work can be called rather … unexpected.

Have you heard how the starlings sing?

In the USA, many hate this little bird - noisy flocks interfere with sleep. But starlings did not always disturb the peace of the Americans. They were brought from Europe only in the nineteenth century. One very wealthy Shakespearean admirer from the United States founded a circle whose goal was to bring to America all the birds that are mentioned in the works of the playwright. By the way, there are more than sixty of them there. Most of these species have not taken root in a new place, but starlings and, by the way, even sparrows - just feel great.

True, in our time, this story is increasingly called a legend. If you dig into the papers, you can see that the circle that brought in birds is called the American Society for Acclimatization, and its purpose was to increase the diversity of useful species on the American continent. The earliest mention of the role of Shakespeare as the inspirer of the migration of birds falls on the forties of the twentieth century.

Armenian names

You will not surprise anyone with the Armenian names Juliet, Ophelia and Hamlet - on the Internet you can even find a serious statement about the Armenian trace in the story of the Danish prince. In fact, Armenians are a nation famous for their love of literature. Any outstanding work that has reached Armenia can turn into a fashion for certain names.

Thus, the story of the Armenian writer Avetik Isahakyan based on the Jewish legend (which was indicated in the epigraph) in 1923 gave rise to a fashion for the name “Lilith”. There are still many women with this name. Those who are shocked by it should remember that its literal meaning is completely harmless, it is related to such a name, for example, as "Leila" and contains the root "night". Later, the popularity of the name was consolidated by the poems of Vadim Shefner and the newly discovered Soviet reader Marina Tsvetaeva.

Love for Goethe led to the spread of the name Greta, to knightly novels - Zabel (that is, Isabella) and Arthur, Pushkin's Tatiana turned into Tushik. Well, or so the legends say.

Gender neutral pronoun

In the twenty-first century in the English-speaking space, many began to protest against the default pronoun "he" (he) when it comes to any abstract person or person whose gender is unknown. There was also a discussion about how, without the approval of a person, one can refer to him as, in fact, his - or her, because now open identification of oneself as an agender, a person who does not assume a stereotypical social gender, is gaining popularity.

There are no pronouns of the third kind, which would be applied to animate nouns, in English, and the situation seemed to be at a dead end - but Shakespeare's lovers recalled that in his papers (as well as texts of his time) the word "they" was mentioned in such cases (they), moreover, to just one person - whose gender is simply unclear or the interlocutor does not want to clarify it. The "Shakespearean" version suited most of those who were worried about the topic of pronouns, and now "they" instead of "he" as the default pronoun is found in texts very often.

Painting

Naturally, the plays - written on purpose for the theater - also suited the cinema. The number of Shakespeare adaptations is huge, but not surprising. But the extent to which he inspired the painters is already more impressive. Shakespeare paintings have been drawn for centuries, in many countries.

This gave us such pre-Raphaelite masterpieces as the painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais, the painting with the same heroine and Miranda and the Tempest by John William Waterhouse, and the work of Edwin Austin Abby's similar style, King Lear. There are many portraits of famous and not so famous personalities in the role of Hamlet - for example, eighteenth century actor David Garrick from William Hoggart and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov from Sophia Kramskoy. And, of course, there are many paintings depicting Romeo and Juliet. Many of these images are so popular and recognizable that they create our common cultural background.

Astronomy

Usually, newly discovered celestial names and large planetary craters are named after outstanding people, for example, you can find asteroids with names like Anna German, Dersu Uzala and Mikhail Petrenko. But the satellites of Uranus are traditionally named after the characters of Shakespeare. So the space in this sectar is similar to the Shakespeare festival: here Miranda, Desdemona, Titania, Juliet, Caliban, Cordelia, Ophelia and others are sweeping through the orbits.

It is believed that another English writer who has just as strongly influenced world culture is the author of only two stories. Lover of naked nymphs and sponsor of young actresses: The Real Secrets of Lewis Carroll.