Reading is good for you, do not be hoodwinked – Parting Shot
Books, like newspapers, are up against the tidal wave of technology, just as gourmet restaurants surrender to the convenience of fast food and garish menus.
If you have ever said “It’s Greek to me,” suffered from ‘green-eyed jealousy’, ‘stood on ceremony’, been ‘tongue-tied’, ‘hoodwinked’ or ‘in a pickle’, you are quoting Shakespeare.
Do you think in 400 years time, you will be quoting from the Dobre Brothers’ tune, ‘You Know You Lit’- the lyrics of which go like:
Started from the grocery store
Now I own a ‘rarri
Them heads spinnin’ when I pass
I do my dance along the floor
Dropping this track
You already know you coming back for more
God gave me everything
The haters keep on hatin’
We keep stackin’
Not sure if it has the same appeal?
The planet Uranus has 27 moons, the majority of which are named for Shakespearean characters: Titania, Oberon, Puck (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Ariel, Miranda, Caliban, Sycorax, Prospero, Setebos, Stephano, Trinculo, Francisco, Ferdinand (The Tempest), Cordelia (King Lear), Ophelia (Hamlet), Bianca (The Taming of the Shrew), Cressida (Troilus and Cressida), Desdemona (Othello), Juliet, Mab (Romeo and Juliet), Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Rosalind (As You Like It), Margaret (Much Ado About Nothing), Perdita (The Winter’s Tale) and Cupid (Timon of Athens).
The two remaining moons, Umbriel and Belinda are named for characters in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
Michelle Boston, USC Literacy professor, writes that in the past four centuries, Shakespeare’s strength as a brand has not faltered. In fact, it’s ubiquitous. His likeness and his works have been used to sell soap, chocolate, cigarettes, computers, beer, soda and almost anything else you can think of.
“Shakespeare’s works are emotional, hilarious, pithy. But above all, he was masterful at imbuing his stories and his characters with qualities that audiences and readers identify with — Hamlet’s anguish, Ophelia’s distress, the enduring love between Romeo and Juliet.”
In Samuel Johnson’s preface to The Plays of Shakespeare (1765), he wrote, “His characters… are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find.”
Will today’s authors – Nora Roberts, Wilbur Smith et al and musicians, Dobre Brothers, Jennifer Lopez et al, have the same enduring qualities of a man who lived centuries before the invention of the automobile and aeroplane?
Getting children to read these days – never mind Shakespeare – is a battle within itself. Overwhelmed by digital technology, children are missing out on the cavernous worlds of imagination and beyond lying in wait for the reader.
The quick-fix video games, intertwined by mindless inane YouTube videos, are seemingly superfluous to perhaps a Hardy Boys book or for the girls, a Nancy Drew adventure. Sadly, it is easier for harassed overworked parents to thrust a tablet or cellphone in their child’s hands and tell him or her to ‘shut up and play with that’, than to go to the library and take out a book.
Books, like newspapers, are up against the tidal wave of technology, just as gourmet restaurants surrender to the convenience of fast food and garish menus. A teacher lamented recently that soon children will not be able to write with a pen, and will rely almost exclusively on their fingers to text as a means of communication.
This will also promote further the use of the dreaded WhatsApp language, which has demoted English to something Fred Flintstone may feel at home with. Getting children to read remains a huge challenge. In the old days, parents used to even encourage kids to read comics such as Beano or Archie just as a way of getting them to read words. Even those appear to have fallen off the shelves and are probably, in Dundee anyway, only available at Graham and Michelle’s book exchange.
The trick of course is to make reading cool. Maybe get Lionel Messi or one of the Dobre Brothers to say ‘Read like You’re Lit’. Role models are more influential than you think. Upon reading that Manchester United star, Marcus Rashford’s favourite subject at school was maths, prompted at least one child we know to opt for extra lessons.
It is all there – it is a matter of channeling the energy.
