Shakespeare And Modern Culture Analysis

Shakespeare and Modern Culture, by Marjorie Garber, begins with an assertion in the form of a chiasmus which states, “Shakespeare makes modern culture and modern culture makes Shakespeare.” Most major plays by Shakespeare have been reincarnated and referenced so abundantly in the form of poems, songs, ballets, musicals, and movie that society now has an “idea” of what Shakespeare is rather than an understanding of the actual plots and major players. Characters, such as Romeo, have become culture types and the mere suggestion of an aspect of culture being “Shakespearean” indicates a great tragedy of epic proportions. Garber’s study traces the how Shakespeare came to represent modernity, and vice versa, through an exploration of ten chapters

Shakespeare and Modern Culture teases out the idea that “the further we get as a society from intimate knowledge of the language and play, the more the “love” of Shakespeare beings to be expressed as a cultural value.” These culture values have very much been transformed into concepts and ideas that fit with society’s interpretation of the plays. Garber discusses, throughout the work, Freud’s intimate relationship to Shakespeare and how a great deal of Freud’s theory either stems from or is applicable to various plays, such as The Tempest, furthering the concept of the chiasmus introduced at the beginning of the novel. Freud’s concept of disavowal is applied by Garber to the previously stated phenomenon of molding Shakespeare’s plots and characters to fit our own

For the purposes of relating this work of literature to the article I am writing, Garber does an excellent job of accounting for how Romeo and Juliet entered popular culture in the 20th century as a “cultural macro” and “recognizable term for passionate and doomed young love.” One example is how youth culture today invokes the idea of “dying for love” as an ultimate and perceived healthy sacrifice. Whereas Juliet’s potion was magical in nature, allowing her to fall asleep and wake up again at the right time, this is now translated to drugs or suicide as a means of giving all for love. One fault of Garber’s book is that it does not identify the inherent problems in many of the updated social references and relationships with