Enough of this pseudo affiliation with the works of Shakespeare and others is sufficient to bluff most folks that you have actually studied classical literature. As always, one must remember to steer clear of folks who do actually know their shit.
Some examples?
Off the top of my head, Ricardo Montalban's Khan Noonian Singh jumps right out. As he lies dying at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (still one of the best Trek movies ever), he quotes Melville:
"To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!"
Between that and "Call me Ishmael", it's an easy thing.
Lets travel back in time to the Original Series, next. Back to a time when they hadn't sorted it all out yet, when Vulcans were a conquered species (I suspect Amerind similarities), Romulans didn't exist, and Kirk grew up on a colony world, not in Iowa, and had survived a culling by a war criminal painted the likes of Goebbles. "The Conscience of the King" is a strange Trek episode these days, but the war criminal is an interstellar traveling Shakespeare troupe. Man I wish they'd stuck with those instead of space hippies two years later... Check it out.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: General Chang is a freakin' Shakespeare soundboard! I found out years later that Chris Plummer and Will Shatner used to actually do Shakespeare together. I wonder if they had as much fun as it looked like in outtakes. Along with Trek II, VI is one of my favorites. Yeah, everyone's long in the tooth, and there's some wacky, indeed idiotic antics, but it's so damned fun.
And Star Trek VI is where I found myself two nights ago, listening to the histrionic soundboard Klingon spinning in his chair, and I wondered about "Tickle us do we not laugh, prick us do we not bleed. Wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
Up to now, I'd never seen Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice. Sure, Much Ado About Nothing is hilarious (Whedon's version is a treat), Hamlet is the gold standard (Still like Gibson's, despite his bigoted idiocy), but this was one I'd never actually read.
YouTube can be great at turns, awful at other. I followed a Google link referencing my curious phrase and wound up watching the last part of the final act of the Michael Radford 2004 movie, beginning with the court scene with Antonio and Shylock, and felt my mouth falling farther and farther open. By the end I just wanted everyone in Antonio's association to die. I had this yawning hole in my chest as I watched the very spirit of justice be first be mauled by Shylock and then utterly perverted by Portia, and all through this I keep hearing the last echo of Shylock's monologue.
"If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
Here it is.
I know this play has had multiple interpretations over the years, and scholars spend their entire lives poring over Shakespeare, and a lot of laypersons think it's all old and musty and dead, but that is so poignant.
I'm an apostate, and have committed the unforgivable sin of denying my so-called lord and savior, but I was raised a Christian, and we talked a good game, all of this stuff about vengeance being our god's purview. Yet, who but the meanest (meaning lowest, least) of us actually followed that tenant? Who among us does not long for the most vicious justice when we have been wronged?
So herein is a tale of revenge and hate and justice promised and denied, oaths broken and deception of the vilest sort. Yes, Shylock is wrong to attempt to kill Antonio in his rage, but Antonio is no hero! The man's a vicious bully. And yet he's also a man of denied love, who can't express his feelings for the man he loves. (And yes, especially in Radford's version, Antonio is in love with Bassanio.)
But the perversion of justice that Portia whips out on Shylock is jaw dropping. I couldn't fathom this. I wasn't sure what I was watching, jumping in at the end as I did. I wondered why the court was so easily bamboozled by these two cross-dressing women, and that led to a whole host of other "head-canon" rabbit holes for my thoughts to chase down.
But the sentencing...
I know the start of the story is this whole clever set up between Portia and Bassanio, and him winning her father's favor, and all of this play revolves around the disgusting bride price custom, and that's why Antonio cavalierly signs his bond as "a pound of flesh", but... The perversion of justice that Portia serves out to Shylock just feels like the Nazi kicking the concentration camp victim into the trench.
Yeah, I went full Godwin. Deal.
In the end, like all of Shakespeare, once you get into it and realize that it's all about people, and people never really change, it is vital and real and a whole bunch of flawed people pursuing their goals and trying to come out alive with just a little happiness. It's all of us. And it's a mirror on our society.
And I have a new ending for the play.
...And Portia and Bassanio choked on their wine that night and died.
The end.
