雅思课外读物--How Shakespeare influenced American ad. industry

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From Abraham Lincoln to Coca-Cola, the Folger Shakespeare Library shows how

the Bard and his plays became embedded in American history and advertising

A handsomely bound complete works of William Shakespeare stands upright

beside opera glasses, a blue lace handkerchief and a single rose. On the wall is

a picture of President Thomas Jefferson’s house Monticello and an article torn

from a newspaper about an “All-American football team”. And also visible is a

red badge that says “Coca-Cola 5c”, an open bottle of Coke and a big

silhouette(剪影;轮廓=outline; a dark shape) of a girl drinking the same. The caption

says: “Thirst, too, seeks quality.”

Shakespeare meets Mad Men in this display of how the American advertising

industry deployed(部署;利用=make use of; take advantage of) the Bard of Avon to add

a touch of class to the postwar consumer boom. The 1949 Coke ad is among an

array(陈列;队列=line; pile) of beguiling cultural artefacts(人工制品) now on show in

America’s Shakespeare at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC,

coinciding(与......同时发生=happen simultaneously) with the

imminent(即将到来的=approaching; coming soon) 400th anniversary of the playwright’s

death.

As she put the finishing touches to the exhibition on Wednesday, curator

(图书馆或博物馆馆长)Georgianna Ziegler looked at the Coca-Cola ad and remarked: “Isn’t

that interesting as a cultural moment, bringing all these things together: Coke

is popular but it’s also classy; it can be enjoyed by people who go to opera and

people who go to football; it’s also very American. I think that’s a fascinating

piece of advertising. It says a lot about what people saw as the role of

Shakespeare in American society.”

As if to prove the old adage(格言=saying, aphorism) that the chief business of

the American people is business, Shakespeare has appeared as a salesman

thousands of times, the exhibition notes, pushing everything from sewing

machines to cigars to Levi’s, from fishing reels, beer and whiskey to cough

syrup(浆), cars and mobile phones.

Indeed, the first reproduction of Shakespeare’s image to appear in America

was in an advert: an engraving(雕刻画) based on his statue at Westminster Abbey

used to promote a stationery company in Philadelphia. It ran in a 1787 volume of

the Columbian Magazine that contained articles such as “A letter in praise of

laughter”, “A Whimsical Solution to the Ancient Problem of Prometheus” and

“Verses by a French Gentleman Addressed to his Bed”. It is also on display at

the Folger.

“I speculate(假设;推测=guess; imagine) that Shakespeare was a sign of class and

elegance – that is the raison d’être(理由) behind most of the adverts using him,”

Ziegler said. “Shakespeare was something a lot of people knew at that time; it

was part of everyday life. They weren’t studying him in school so much, but they

were memorising speeches: elocution(演说艺术) was a big thing.”

The exhibition’s touchscreens include various TV ads, most recently from

Under Armour sports clothing whose commercial last year “Shakespeare Got it All

Wrong”. In a rebuttal(驳斥=retort; refusal; rejection) to “All the world’s a

stage, and all the men and women merely players,” actor Jamie Foxx declares: “Mr

Shakespeare never met Stephen Curry,” describing the basketball star as a “new

creative genius” and “patron saint of the underdog”.

America’s fascination(沉迷;喜好=obsession; enchantment) with Shakespeare is older

than the republic itself. One of the prize exhibits is a new acquisition, the

earliest documented ownership of a Shakespeare folio in the New World. It is

listed on a blank page in a 1673 English translation of Juvenal that belonged to

Major Edward Dale, a royalist who fled to America after the English civil

war.

As the colonists rebelled against British rule and its punitive(惩罚性的) taxes,

leading to the revolutionary war, both sides reached for Hamlet. “Be taxt, or

not be taxt, that is the question,” wrote a patriot in 1770, while a loyalist

Tory expressed uncertainty about whether to subscribe to (署名;订阅=sign)a boycott

of British goods in 1774: “To sign, or not to sign? That is the question.”

Likewise soldiers on both sides of the American civil war performed his plays

in between battles. The exhibition includes an 1864 photo and New York playbill

for Julius Caesar starring John Wilkes Booth and his two brothers to raise funds

for a Shakespeare statue in Central Park. Six months later, Booth shot Abraham

Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington and, the display shows, posters

announced the president’s death with quotations from Macbeth.

It was a work that both men particularly admired. “I think none equals

Macbeth,” wrote Lincoln, who often quoted the playwright, in a letter also on

public view. As Booth fled into hiding, he also quoted from the Scottish play in

the last words of his diary: “I must fight the course. ’Tis all that’s left in

me.”

German, Irish, Italian and Russian immigrants put their own spin on the Bard,

but African American actors Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson were forced to develop

their careers in Europe. Shakespeare’s plays were raw material for hundreds of

silent films, with Richard III (1912) the first full-length feature; actor

Frederick Warde often appeared at screenings and read extracts from the play

during the changing of the reels. Then came gloriously American musical takes on

the canon such as Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story.

When television arrived, the DuMont network came up with the strapline:

“Verily Mr Shakespeare. All the world’s a stage … with television.” Ziegler

observed: “Every time a new medium was introduced, Shakespeare was there. It

made this new media OK because you can do what Shakespeare did.”

The exhibition includes cartoons, promptbooks, radio broadcasts and

theatrical costumes. Perhaps the unlikeliest photo is of an American soldier in

Vietnam with a copy of The Taming of the Shrew strapped to his helmet(头盔). An

“Armed Services Edition” of Henry V was put out for the second world war and

reprinted for troops in Iraq.

Created by oil tycoon Henry Clay Folger and his wife Emily, the library has

the world’s biggest Shakespeare collection and a working theatre. Ziegler, its

associate librarian and head of reference, recalled that in pre-internet days

she would often get calls from the nearby Congress asking for Shakespearean

quotations to leaven(给......润色=polish) political speeches. “I remember Al Gore’s

office called asking for a quotation from Coriolanus. I said, ‘what about?’, but

they wouldn’t tell me. I don’t know if they ever used it.”

Shakespeare in America is one of the subjects considered in Andrew Dickson’s

book Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe. He said on Thursday:

“One of the fascinating things about American Shakespeare, particularly during

the 19th and early 20th centuries, is how the plays come to saturate(浸透) culture

at every level, from east coast libraries and reading societies to minstrel

shows and advertising hoardings.

“For advertisers in particular it’s a way of showing off your

sophistication(深度;世故圆滑=depths, wisdom) – if you’re smart enough to have brushed

up on your Shakespeare, you’re smart enough to buy our product. My own favourite

is a Ford ad from 1964 called ‘Seven Characters in Search of Seven Cars’, which

suggests that the perfect car for Cleopatra is a Capri. Prospero from The

Tempest only gets a Cortina, which sounds a bit of a raw deal.”

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