Shakespeare References In Magazines (Cascade, Harper’s Magazine, SAG-AFTRA, Westways) And One Book

March/April issue of Westways

The Winter 2014 issue of Cascade, the University of Oregon’s College and Arts and Science magazine, has a Shakespeare reference. The first line of a piece titled “Arabic E-Book Expands Language Experience” is “Antar and Abla are the real-life Romeo and Juliet of Arabic history” (p. 18).

The March 1999 issue of Harper’s Magazine contains two references to Shakespeare. The first comes in a piece by Lewis H. Lapham titled “Exorcism.” The piece begins with a quoted passage from Troilus And Cressida: “Take but degree away, untune that string,/And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets/In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters/Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores/And make a sop of all this solid globe” (page 12). The second is in an essay on theatre by Arthur Miller. The piece is titled, “On Broadway: Notes on the past and future of American theater.” Miller writes, “The strict containment not of emotion but of emotionalism is the hallmark of the Greek tragic plays, of Moliere and Racine and the Japanese Noh plays, whereas Shakespeare, it seems to me, is the balance, the fusion of idea and feeling” (page 47).

In the Fall 2013 (Vol. 2 No. 3) issue of SAG-AFTRA, there is a Shakespeare reference. In a short piece on the Life Achievement Award being given to Pearl Bailey in 1976, it quotes from Bailey’s acceptance speech (which was unprepared): “Leave the theater? How can you leave the theater without leaving the earth? Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage.’ So I never left the theater to go into the U.N. I’m still on the stage” (page 92).

The March/April 2014 issue of Westways mentions Shakespeare a couple of times. The first is in relation to Shakespeare’s birthday, and there’s a short piece titled “Birthday Bard,” written by Joan Trapper. Its first line has a reference to one of Shakespeare’s comedies: “This year it’s Shakespeare as you like it, as theater festivals across the U.S. celebrate the playwright’s 450th birthday” (p. 26). The very next sentence has references to a couple of other Shakespeare plays: “With hundreds of venues to choose from, the questions are to be or not to be indoors or out, to partake in free offerings or pay for a seat, and to cry at the tragedies or laugh at the comedies, where all’s well that ends well.” And in the next sentence, there is a reference to Julius Caesar: “If we don’t find something to our taste, well, the fault’s not in the stars but in ourselves.” The piece then goes on to give short descriptions of The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Independent Shakespeare Company’s Griffith Park productions, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare In The Park in New York.

Then, in a piece on Topanga, under things to do, it lists Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, saying it “was once a venue for 1950s blacklisted actors and remains popular for Shakespeare productions and folk music” (p. 34).

Also, in the novel The Long Haul by Amanda Stern there is one brief Shakespeare reference. A girl named Lisa has had her baby, but hasn’t named him. So people at the bar shout out suggestions. Amanda Stern writes: “They are screaming like on the floor of the stock exchange: Peter! Tony! Tumor! Loser! Freakboy! Truck! Romeo!” (page 110).