Shakespeare and relevance

There’s a very annoying current song, “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. (Don’t click on that link if you don’t want to be earwormed. It goes to a video of the song, which is so bothers me precisely because the lyrics are so annoying, while the tune is very catchy. It’s a lethal combination.) It occurred to me this morning that Shakespeare perfectly encapsulated why I find the sone so annoying. It’s the first scene in King Lear, where Goneril and Regan speak extravagant words of love to their father, while Cordelia, who loves most, speaks least and is duly punished for it. The song strieks me as the same sort of ting; the speaker is so unbelivably extravagant that he strieks me as aan untrustworthy narrator and I begin to suspect that he’s better loved than his own overstated love deserves.

That got me thinking on what Shakespeare might have to say about other current situations. ROmeo and Juliet springs to mind, in a much more serious way; the forbidden marriages of our times are not forbidden by roval families but by reason of sex. I’d say there are two stark lessons there: that lovers forbidden by their authorities to marry are going to find sympathizers and a way to do it nonetheless – and a warning about what happens when teenagers are forbidden to love whom they will. (I suspect there’s stuff relevant to SSM in the sonnets, too, particularly the ‘fair youth” ones, but I’m not sorting through all of them now.

I have the feeling that I’ve snagged on the really obvious stuff and am missing a whole lot of other bits and pieces of current relevance. (Claiming that Twelfth Night reflects transgender issues is too farfetched even for me, though the idea from Twelfth Night of a man with not much to offer believing that he somehow deserves the most gifted anad attractive woman is certainly current.