Before leaving the Alabama Shakespeare Festival this year, I stopped in its terrific gift shop. How nice to see posters, pencils, refrigerator magnets, mugs, thimbles, and even breath sweeteners with the Bard’s face on them. There are plenty of T-shirts here too, of course, including one with that line from Henry VI, Part II that will never die: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
I perused many books, such as Shakespeare’s 100 Best One-Liners, Shakespeare for Kids, The Shakespeare Quiz Book, and William Shakespeare and the Globe. In these, I found that the Bard invented the term “bated breath” in The Merchant of Venice — a phrase that Marshall Barer used to good advantage in Once Upon a Mattress. Also in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare invented the word “laughable,” thereby providing lyricist Sidney Michaels with a word he needed for the song “How Laughable It Is” in Ben Franklin in Paris. I also found that Stephen Sondheim would have had a tougher time with the Gypsy lyrics without Shakespeare, who invented the words “mimic” (as “in you’re more than just a…”) and “bump” (as in “…it with a trumpet”).
I kept reading and learned that “anchovy,” which Cole Porter uses in “Stereophonic Sound” in Silk Stockings, was a word that Shakespeare coined for Henry IV, Part I. And if there had been no Bard, Mel Brooks would had to find something else for Leo Bloom to do after he’s drunk too much champagne — for Shakespeare invented the word “puke,” too. (I’ll forgive him for that.) And by the time I learned that, in Henry VIII, Shakespeare coined the term “For goodness’ sake” — which was the name of a 1922 Broadway musical — I started wondering, hmm, was it possible that there has always been a musical on Broadway that contained a Shakespearean reference?
Finding a lyric before the original cast album years isn’t easy, so I just kept to the last 60 years. And indeed, during that time, there always was a musical on Broadway that gave at least one nod to Shakespeare. Want proof? Here:
October 7, 1943 – February 10, 1945: For One Touch of Venus, Ogden Nash borrowed “Speak low, if you speak love” from Much Ado About Nothing to create his lyric for “Speak Low.”
December 28, 1944 – February, 2, 1946: When Gabey is On the Town, he finds it “lonely,” a word Shakespeare invented for the title character of Coriolanus.
April 19, 1945 – May 24, 1947: In Carousel, Carrie Pipperidge Snow says that, on her trip to New York, she much preferred a show called Madcap Maidens to Julius Caesar. Did Oscar Hammerstein know, when he invented that title, that Shakespeare came up with the word “madcap” for Love’s Labour’s Lost?
January 10, 1947 – October 2, 1948: In Finian’s Rainbow, Og sings about “Romeo and Guenevere.” While the latter isn’t a character from Shakespeare, I don’t have to tell you that the former one is.
April 30, 1948 – Feb. 19, 1949: In Inside USA, Beatrice Lillie sang in “At the Mardi Gras” that she was “pursued by a Romeo.”
October 11, 1948 – September 9, 1950: Who knew that Shakespeare invented the word “gossip” (in The Comedy of Errors)? Frank Loesser was happy he did, as it enabled him to write a song titled “The Gossips” for Where’s Charley?
December 30, 1948 – July 28, 1951: Needless to say, Kiss Me, Kate wouldn’t have existed without the Bard’s The Taming of the Shrew.
April 7, 1949 – January 16, 1954: Shakespeare coined the word “schoolboy” (in Hamlet), which is what Emile de Beque feels like in South Pacific.
February 25, 1953 – July 3, 1954: In Wonderful Town, Wreck can “pass that football,” but he would have to pass something else had Shakespeare not invented the word “football” in Henry V. (Hear it now in the controversial and fascinating production of that play in Central Park.)
May 13, 1954 – November 24, 1956: “Hurry,” originally heard in The Comedy of Errors, is what the Sleep-Tite Factory workers in The Pajama Game cry out when Hinesy is on their backs.
March 15, 1956 – September 29, 1962: “The milk of human kindness,” which Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady purports to have in every vein, is actually an expression Shakespeare coined for Macbeth.
Henry MacHiggins: Rex Harrison, full of the milk of human kindness
March 15, 1962 – August 3, 1963: In No Strings, Barbara Woodruff warns David Jordan that they won’t have a relationship “Unless we’re equal partners in the fight.” “Partners” was first heard in As You Like It.
April 23, 1963 – January 11, 1964: In She Loves Me, Amalia and Ilona conclude “I Don’t Know His Name” by rhetorically asking, “What’s in a name?” — just as
Juliet once did.
October 3, 1963 – July 25, 1964: Here’s Love! contains a song called “The Plastic Alligator” (but it didn’t make the cast album). Meredith Willson can thank Shakespeare for inventing the word “alligator” in Romeo and Juliet.
February 27, 1964 – June 12, 1965: In What Makes Sammy Run?, the boorish Sammy Glick, embarrassed that he’s been caught doing something shady by Al Manheim, snarls to him, “Like Shakespeare said, ‘Please drop dead.'”
February 16, 1965 – November 14, 1965: No, it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes who was the first to say, “The game is afoot” — which he said in Baker Street, too. Shakespeare wrote it for Henry IV, Part I.
October 17, 1965 – June 11, 1966: The Sleep-Tite workers aren’t the only ones to sing “Hurry.” So does Daisy Gamble in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, when she urges her flowers to come “up here” where it’s “lovely.”
January 29, 1966 – July 15, 1967: “Rhythm in the Bedroom,” sing the celebrants of the Rhythm of Life Church in Sweet Charity, thereby using a word (“bedroom”) that Shakespeare coined in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
May 24, 1966 – January 3, 1970: Mame tells her Bosom Buddy Vera Charles, “You try to be Peg O’ My Heart when you’re Lady Macbeth.”
November 20, 1966 – September 6, 1969: In Cabaret, Fraulein Schneider tells Herr Shultz, “I am no Juliet and you are no Romeo.”
April 29, 1968 – July 1, 1972: Hair quotes two important lines from Hamlet, “What a piece of work is man” and Hamlet’s very last words, “The rest is silence.”
December 1, 1971 – May 20, 1973: The Tony-winning Two Gentlemen of Verona was, of course, based on Shakespeare’s play.
October 23, 1972 – June 12, 1977: Pippin sings, “And far away you’ll hear me singing softly to the dawn.” Shakespeare created the last word of that line for Henry V.
January 5, 1975 – January 28, 1979: In The Wiz, Evilene tells The Lord High Underling, “A plague on both your houses!” That’s Mercutio’s line in Romeo and Juliet. (By the way, the Lord in The Wiz then responds, “Not my summer place, too!”)
June 19, 1978 – March 27, 1982: In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, we learn that “Watchdog will get you!” But the show wouldn’t have been able to use the word “watchdog” had Shakespeare not invented it for The Tempest.
September 25, 1979 – June 26, 1983: “Excitement!” shout the lackeys in “Rainbow High” in Evita. Shakespeare invented the word for Hamlet.
May 1, 1983 – March 3, 1985: In the title song of My One and Only, it’s not long before we hear the word “lonely” — again, from Coriolanus.
March 2, 1984 – Oct. 13, 1985: If “Gossip” was good enough for Frank Loesser in Where’s Charley? it certainly was good enough for Stephen Sondheim in Sunday in the Park with George.
April 25, 1985 – September 20, 1987: There are plenty of Shakespearean references in Big River, once those two actors join Huck and Jim on the raft. My favorite occurs when the Duke soliloquizes, “To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.”
August 10, 1986 – December 31, 1989: During “Song of Hareford” in Me and My Girl, all the Harefords are paraded before us. One of them is clearly supposed to be Richard III.
January 26, 1988 to right now — Firmin suspects “foul play” in The Phantom of the Opera, just as Dionyza first did in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
And, finally: I didn’t know that Shakespeare named my profession, but most of the books state that he came up with the word “critic.” None of them say from which play it came or even what Shakespeare said about us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the line from which it sprung was, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the critics.”
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]
