Episode 57 - Shakespeare‘s Families

Much like many of our modern stories, Shakespeare used the family as the core of many of his tales, so we dove into the many vagaries of families in Shakespeare's plays to see what made them tick. What was the family "supposed" to look like in Elizabethan times, and how did Shakespeare play with that idea? Which plays feature the most damaged families, and which ones, if any, feature the happy variety? Join us for a glance at the wide variety of familial creations in the Shakespeare ouvre.

Notes:

• Aidan was thinking of this little snippet of Back to the Future 2, for his speech about the lord of the manor, which is set in 2015 but is still vaguely futuristic (hence why he confused it with Fifth Element, set in the 23rd century, totally understandable of course).
• To Aidan's utter amazement, there's actually a more involved back story to the famous "Abed has a subplot that doesn't get any screentime" bit from Community. Watch the whole story unravel on YouTube at your convenience.
• It was Nora Ephron and it was in the DVD commentary of When Harry Met Sally. But Shakespeare is most definitely not writing in the tradition of Woody Allen. Still, Lindsay thinks the statement holds. Here is the quote (and the full link to the BBC article for which it was transcribed):

 “There are two traditions of romantic comedy, the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition. In the Christian tradition, there is a genuine obstacle. In the Jewish tradition pioneered by Woody Allen, the basic obstacle is the neurosis of the male character.”

Ancient Bickerings:

• Due to ongoing worries about heat exhaustion, we kept our Ancient Bickerings topic nice and simple: if you had to become a member of one of Shakespeare's families, which one would it be?