The Meaning of the Bones

theparisreview.org

24 points·dnetesn··7 comments

Shakespeare is so popuar because he's the most popular playwright of the current lingua franca of the world. That's all there is to it.

And I say that as someone who absolutely adores Shakespeare and who's from the country that had the first ever Shakespeare society (hint: it's not an anglophone one).

> Perhaps the most miraculous thing about Shakespeare is that, through the accidents of history, he’s come to form a global point of reference.

Is he really a "global point of reference"? I'm not at all confident I could drop a reference to, say, Macbeth or Hamlet when dealing with people from India or China. Using the high-points of American popular culture like Luke Skywalker or Superman seems a lot safer.

I'd be interested to hear from folks from outside the Anglosphere on this point.

I agree, he is not at all. I would also wager Rowling (Tolkien maybe even GRRM) has more universal appeal than Shakespeare.

edit: I'm from Europe

To drop, or not to drop - is that your question? Most Indian schoolchildren of my generation grew up with at least one play by the bard (or a few) at school. I don't know about schoolkids these days, though.

Somewhere around the house, I have a copy of Samuel Johnson's prefaces to Shakespeare's plays, edited by an Indian professor. Now, I can't at all speak to the case of China.

Chinese people generally hear of Shakespeare in school but few will have read him.

India obviously has a huge English influence, going back to the colonial days.

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