ABSTRACT

In his Preface to Shakespeare (1765) Samuel Johnson expressed some doubt that to isolate individual passages from Shakespeare was a worthwhile activity: ‘he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.’1 Imagine Dr Johnson’s consternation if he were to read in a national daily newspaper, a justification for abridging Shakespeare on the grounds that complex structures could be reduced to ‘sound-bites’ and ‘highlights’. In an article in the Guardian of 24 November 1992, entitled ‘Soundbite Shakespeare’, the following justification for carrying bricks in one’s pocket was put: ‘Anyone who watches sport on television will know that “highlights” from a football match are the best bits: the goals, the penalties, the exciting near misses. Highlights let viewers see all the important events in a game without seeing it all’ (p.16). A more egocentric version of this principle might be the advent of Karaoke Shakespeare, available to what the Guardian has called ‘Closet Branaghs or Oliviers’ at a price of £50 for each play.