There are many ways of judging how popular a writer is or for how long his/her name and reputation stay with us over the years. This may be done through the quantity of their sales; how many times their books are turned into films or plays or perhaps, how many of their most famous lines and quotes enter the language on a regular basis.
If we take the above criteria into account, it is obvious that our Will beats them all. His name is known by all, his plays have been turned into dozens of films and speeches and lines such as, there's the rub, pomp and circumstance, it was Greek to me and he has eaten me out of house and home have become a standard part of our everyday parlance.
And not only that, but dozens of authors have used Shakespearean phrases as the titles of their books. William Faulkner took The Sound and the Fury from Macbeth, J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan wrote Dear Brutus, Somerset Maugham took Cakes and Ale from Twelfth Night and Dorothy Sayers wrote a novel called Gaudy Night, its title coming from Antony and Cleopatra.
Perhaps another way of judging how perennially popular the Bard is, is to see how many times, the Man from Stratford and/or his plays and sonnets appear in cartoons in newspapers and magazines. If you look at Google, you will find pages and pages of them. I have chosen only a few here to make my point. What is interesting is, that even if the reader cannot identify the exact speaker or action in the cartoon, he or she will recognise that it is based on Shakespeare and his works.
Which play and character appear the most in these cartoons? From a quick survey of the many I have looked at I have come to the conclusion that the "To be or not to be" speech and the graveyard scene from Hamlet are the most popular with cartoonists.
Here is a sample selection:
Note: This idea has appeared in several variations.
And now for the graveyard scene:
And as it says at the end of the "Tom and Jerry" and other cartoons, "That's all folks!"
Next time, more cartoons from the Sonnets, Richard III et al.
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