Shakespeare References in Star Trek Memories

It is certainly not surprising to find Shakespeare references in William Shatner's Star Trek Memories, a book he wrote with Chris Kreski. Star Trek has always been strangely, wonderfully connected to Shakespeare. In fact, several of the references in this book come in the episode titles from the show. And William Shatner had done some Shakespeare before being cast in Star Trek. The book's first reference is to Shakespeare himself: "With all that in mind, it becomes conceivable that even if Shakespeare himself were to rise from the dead, dig himself out of his grave and hop a transatlantic Concorde to L.A., showing up in the William Morris offices with TV spec script in hand, he'd most likely be turned away at the lobby" (pages 15-16). The next reference is to Hamlet: "However, by 1964 Desilu had suffered the slings and arrows of Lucy and Desi's divorce, and also the irrational but somehow enduring stigma attached to that particular pairing of names" (p. 37). The phrase "slings and arrows" comes from Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. Then we get a reference to Macbeth: "He and his assistants now labored over a green vatful of viscous liquid mumbling to themselves and appearing not unlike Macbeth's three witches. Finally, after adding some unusual ingredients into the mix (Eye of newt? A bit of dragon's blood? Who knows?), they once again came up with a bright green batch of new improved paste" (p. 68). There is another reference to Hamlet's famous speech: "likeable professional who somehow managed to suffer every one of the unavoidable slings and arrows of network television without ever losing perspective or his formidable sense of humor" (p. 83). There is another Hamlet reference, this time not related to that beloved soliloquy: "All of this was truly odd for me because I'd never felt this sort of jealousy before. I was always for 'the team,' and 'the peace' and 'the play's the thing,' so these new feelings caught me totally off guard" (p. 264). The phrase "the play's the thing" comes from Hamlet's famous lines at the end of Act II: "The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King." The end of that line would serve as an episode title for the series, and that's mentioned in this book, along with an episode titled "Dagger Of The Mind," which comes from a line in Macbeth. Shatner writes: "For example, Grace was to have co-starred with Captain Kirk in our eleventh episode, 'Dagger of the Mind,' but her deterioration forced Roddenberry and Justman into a decision to rewrite the episode, adding the guest character of Dr. Helen Noel and entirely deleting Yeoman Rand. Further, in Grace's final episode, 'The Conscience of the King,' her performance consisted solely of walking onto the bridge in the background of the scene, taking a quick look at a particular piece of equipment, then exiting" (p. 283). The "Dagger of the Mind" episode is again mentioned on pages 359 and 360. One of the book's chapters is titled "To Stay Or Not To Stay" (p. 285), obviously a play on Hamlet's "To be or not to be." Another episode title is "By Any Other Name," a reference to the bad quarto of Romeo And Juliet, that episode mentioned on page 316. The correct line (in both the second quarto and the First Folio) is "a rose by any other word." Another episode is titled "All Our Yesterdays," a phrase that comes from my favorite speech in all of Shakespeare's work, Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech, in which Macbeth says "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death." That episode is mentioned on pages 364, 365 and 371.

Star Trek Memories was published in 1993. My copy is the paperback edition from July 1994.