...................................Picture: Ken Meyer Jr..Do you read Shakespeare? I don't! Hello, I wait for the movies to come out. Which is what some of you do with Stephen King. Reading a play isn't much fun to me. Doesn't matter if it's a script written by King, or Shakespeare.
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I was startled when someone pointed out some of the similarities between the two writers. Then I read Dr. Michael Colling's state that he tells students that King is a modern Shakespeare. (Stephen King Companion) Unfortunately, he did not elaborate.
.In High School we had Shakespeare forced on us, while we read Stephen King for fun. I dread the day King is required reading and kids dread opening their books. Mercifully, unless you are in a Stephen King play or movie, you will probably never be forced to memorize Stephen King. I can still spout lines from McBeth.
.What If Shakespeare And King Switched Places?
.In 2003 The Texas State University-San Marcos Department of Theatre and Dance presented John Fleming’s romantic comedy, Transposing Shakespeare. What was it? Well, their description was, "An original production scripted by Fleming, a faculty member at Texas State, the play features Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare and contemporary novelist Stephen King transposed in time. While King enjoys great success with his tragedies in historic England, Shakespeare struggles to have his work accepted in New York and Hollywood." (FUNNY!)
.Educated People See The Connection
.The Christian Science Monitor quotes Jim Farrelly - who teaches "Stephen King on Film" at Ohio's University of Dayton - "Some people at the university think I'm crazy when I compare something of Stephen King's to Shakespeare, but it's a wonder to see how his texts stand up to scrutiny." The article notes that one student linked evil and fury in King's "The Shining" to Shakespeare's "Othello." (See link at bottom)
.Some may not be quite so sure!
.Put John Nettles at Pop Matters on the list of people who aren't convinced King lines up with Shakespeare.
.Nettles writes, "This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (to the best of our knowledge), but the longest, most famous, and most overanalyzed of the Bard's plays has yet to become winded. It's considered a feather in any actor's cap to play the melancholy and difficult Dane, we've seen three different film versions of it in the last twenty years, and Hamlet is one of the five most widely recognized figures in global literature. Not a bad score for an itinerant hack like Will Shaxper the glovemaker's kid. Hack, scrivener, lowbrow quill-pusher — he churned plays out like a machine, ripping off all but one of his plots from other people, and trotted them out to an audience of inner-city illiterates and country bumpkins who'd just won or lost money watching a dog and a bear try to disembowel each other.
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Shakespeare flourished in a genre that was the professional wrestling of its day, and the only reason he is more than a literary footnote is that he was consistently entertaining enough for some friends to publish his plays posthumously. Those who make their living mythologizing the Immortal Bard don't like to admit it, but the man was, and is, first and foremost a commercial commodity."
.Now he says all that, only to comment in the very next paragraph: "Stephen King is no Shakespeare, and he'll be the first to tell you that." and concludes with, "It may not be Shakespeare, but it counts."
.Some similarities:
.1. Broad Appeal:
.Alan Cheuse, book commentator on NPR's says King's real gift is his broad appeal. "Even Shakespeare's most serious plays had sections that appealed to groundlings - the lowest audience - and King manages to bring in those serious readers and the lowest common denominator." I guess I'm among the "lowest" audience!
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What does it say when The Modern Library releases a list of 100 best novels in two lists: The first list is The Board's List, and the second list is the Readers List. The Board does not have a single Stephen King novel, but the readers list has both The Stand and It. So the uppidy-ups in literature walk right by a guy readers love.
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In their review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, blogcritics.org writes that it is interesting to remember "when you hear people glibly saying that Shakespeare was "merely" the Stephen King of his times. Usually, what they mean he wasn't an intellectual giant, just a guy writing prolific quantities of popular fiction, as if there are scores of Governor General and Nobel-worthy geniuses lost to time. Shakespeare, in this view, is just a man who gives the masses the slop that they want so that he can make a buck. It's an attempt to diminish his work, to lower him to the status of a hack. Greenblatt does note that in spite of his aloofness, Shakespeare never really shook his middle-class roots:
He never showed signs of boredom at the small talk, trivial pursuits, and foolish games of ordinary people. The highest act of his magician Prospero is to give up his magical powers and return to the place from which he had come.
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In this, perhaps, Shakespeare and King have something in common. Rather than diminishing their value, maybe it shows why their works have enduring appeal with such wide-ranging audiences.
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2. Ghost. This one is obvous! Macbeth has spirits all over the place. "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." Or, more bluntly: Redrum.
.3. Lots of murder and blood.
.4. Betrayal. Maybe Jake should have cried "Et tu, Brute!" as Roland let him slip in The Gunslinger.
.5. Media. Shakespeare didn't have Hollywood to produce his work as soon as he wrote it -- but it did immediately reach the stage. And, his work was some of the earliest performed for Camera; time and time again.
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We've all seen Shakespeare doon badly on film or stage (high school drama, anyone?) And, the work is appealing enough that one bad movie won't stop it from being tried again. That has already been the case for King with works like: The Shining, Salem's Lot, and there was even a remake of Carrie. And, like Shakespeare's work, King's is oftne built on -- thus we get Children of the Corn part 2 to 22 billion.
.6. Why did Arnie love Christine? Because, "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
.What remains to be seen:
.Will King's work endure?
.I think it will to som degree, if not for entertainment, for the sake of history. He will always be a part of telling our generations story -- because he writes about America as it is now. So if you want to see America of the 1980's, read a King book from the 80's. Ha! Stephen King is History! Will it endure like Shakespeare as entertainment as well as something to be studied? I think so.
.Carrington Nye at Helium writes, "I am not ashamed to admit that Stephen King's works have touched me deep inside, have made me pause and reflect or to have horrified me beyond measure. It is my opinion (and it cannot be a sole view) that Stephen King is one of the Greats, a living great that should be celebrated in his life and not held off until after his death as we did with Edgar Allen Poe."
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Do you want to read what Stpehen King reads? Some of the books on his 2009 reading list are pretty good. Drood in particular was outstanding. Also, King has said before that he likes to listen to books.
