Romeo, save me
Play "Shakespeare or Taylor Swift" on this week's episode, out now!
What’s an AP class without a not-so-brief discussion about Shakespeare? Join us as we compare Taylor Swift to William Shakespeare, and find out why we think Shakespeare may have been the original pop star of his day. Shakespeare’s plays remain incredibly relevant even today, so it’s only natural that Taylor Swift would find ways to allude to his works in her music. In this Show & Tell, we each pick one Shakespeare play and a Taylor Swift song that we feel best references and represents that play. Maansi ties Romeo & Juliet to “Love Story” (Fearless 2008), Jenn talks us through Julius Caesar references in “Bad Blood” (Reputation 2017), and Jodi draws parallels between Midsummer Night’s Dream and “Cruel Summer” (Lover 2019). We really put the AP in APTS with this discussion so push up your reading glasses, dust off your old Shakespeare textbooks, and get ready to get nerdy with us!
🛍️ Shop With Us! Active Discount Codes
As we grow, we are so excited to announce new partnerships! Here you’ll find active discount codes available to our listeners.
🔉Libro.fm Support your local bookstore while listening to great audiobooks.
Code: APTS
Offer: Get a free audiobook when you start a new membership (you must use this link!)
Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership.Code: APTS30
Offer: 30% off specific audiobooks in the AP Taylor Swift playlist.
✨ Krowned Krystals Make the whole place shimmer with the best rhinestones
Code: APTS
Offer: 10% off your order when you use the link above
🎒This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Maansi
Maybe you were overjoyed when you heard we were going to be doing an episode on Shakespeare. Or maybe you were skeptical, unconvinced. “Why Shakespeare?” In case you believe that comparing Shakespeare to Taylor Swift is a stretch, this extra credit goes beyond what we started to talk about on the podcast to explain why Shakespeare and Taylor may actually be birds of a feather.
In this week’s episode, I comment on how Shakespeare was kind of like the original pop icon. Though pop music by definition is a kind of contemporary music, and Shakespeare is obviously not an actual pop icon, the comparison holds for several reasons.
Per study.com, “Pop music is an abbreviation of the word 'popular. ' It's a contemporary form of music that appeals to a very wide audience. It often includes a danceable tempo, easy to remember lyrics, and simple notation. Pop music is commonly found on mainstream radio stations and across a range of countries and cultures.”
Shakespeare’s plays were not a contemporary form of music, however, they do check all the other criteria - they appealed to a very wide audience, engaging the common man in addition to the nobles of England, were written in a reliable tempo (iambic pentameter) that made the lines easy to remember, and would go on to be performed for centuries, spanning across borders and cultures.
One of the reasons that Shakespeare is so important to English literature is because of how prolific he was. Wikipedia credits him with writing “39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship” throughout his 52-year lifespan. In modern times, Taylor Swift is quickly becoming known for her massive catalog of music. Given that she writes all her own songs, she’s definitely rivaling Shakespeare on prolificness.
The sheer number of Shakespeare’s plays is remarkable by itself, but becomes more significant when examined under the lens of impact on the English language and future works of literature. Shakespeare wrote all his plays at a time when people did not even have dictionaries. This combination of performing his works so that even the illiterate could enjoy them, but also transcribing the works so they could be distributed and immortalized had significant implications for the English language. Because he was one of the first to write down many words in the English language, he’s credited with contributing over 1700 words to the English language. The Royal Shakespeare Company adds that “As well as inventing completely new words, he used existing words in inventive ways, for example he was the first person to use 'friend' as a verb, as well as 'unfriended’ (Twelfth Night) and from 'gloom' he invented the word 'gloomy' (Titus Andronicus).”
The combination of performing and transcribing his plays also meant all kinds of people could enjoy his plays for generations to come. Because Shakespeare’s many plays were so well known, both in his day and beyond, they have often been alluded to in daily speech and other works of literature. In addition to using words that he created, people often quote Shakespeare without even realizing it. In the making of this episode, for example, Jodi and I realized that the famous “Et tu, Brute?” is a line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and not the actual words of Julius Caesar in history (which, I’ll admit, in retrospect makes a lot more sense lol).
Though Taylor Swift is not currently known for adding new words to the English language, she has gotten a reputation for taking advantage of the breadth and depth of the English language by including all kinds of SAT vocab in her lyrics. Her long discography paired with her massive fanbase means phrases from her lyrics are also being alluded to and sneaking into people’s everyday vocabulary. Just this past year, we witnessed many examples where NFL reporters dropped in heavy Taylor Swift allusions at every Chiefs football game. Certainly, her lyrics are well known by the masses around the world, and undoubtedly, her biggest pop hits will go down in history to be as well recognized just as well as the likes of Elvis Presley or The Beatles. And though she can’t be credited with being the one of the first to write down all these words, she has made history in her own way, as one of the few artists to rerecord all her music so that she owns it.
Of course, aside from these icons’ massive impact on culture and the masses, there’s also the obvious connection between Taylor Swift and Shakespeare in her lyrics. Taylor herself alludes to Shakespeare on multiple occasions, which is what we discuss more in this week’s episode. But if all that is not convincing enough, this BuzzFeed survey validates that it’s often difficult to distinguish whether certain phrases come from Shakespeare or Taylor Swift, so clearly we’re not the only ones who see the connection. Take the quiz to see if you can tell the difference and let us know how successful you were!