I went to Professor Burton's office hours on Friday to review my new thesis. A few problems with my thesis stated in this post include:
1. Still much too broad.
2. No groundbreaking thesis - too general.
3. Will require too much work to complete by the deadline.
After reviewing my previous posts, and revisiting my hub post, I have a revised thesis. It is based on an article I reviewed in this post. To recap, Shakespeare and the interaction of his works with popular culture have changed through time. They went from commodity for the masses, to a highbrow form of entertainment and culture. My thesis that I am proving on my blog is that SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS NOW CONTAIN A BIT OF BOTH WORLDS. IT HAS BOTH THEMES AND IDEAS TO BE STUDIED BY THE SCHOLARLY, AS WELL AS ENTERTAINMENT VALUE FOR THE MASSES. THE FACT THAT SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS HAVE REMAINED POPULAR THROUGHOUT THE AGES IS EVIDENCE THAT THOUGH MEANS OF TRANSMIT OF POPULAR CULTURE HAS CHANGED, PERHAPS WE ARE MORE SIMILAR TO THE CULTURE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY THAN WE REALIZE.
I need to find more scholarly sources for my argument, but the Shakespop article that I link to above is my main start. My posts on things such as Richard III - Play in a Day, the Othello symposium, She's the Man rendition of Twelfth Night, BYU's production of Much Ado About Nothing , our flashmob, and my songwriting project, serve to show how mainstream popular culture, as well as scholars have adapted the use of Shakespeare.
