I played "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin to my students on Friday. Well, maybe
that's a little bit deceptive. I played the first minute and eight seconds. You know, after the intro, and then the lines, "there's a lady that's sure all that glitters is gold and she's buying a stairway to heaven." You're probably confused. Did you know that the first line of "Stairway to Heaven" is a reference to Shakespeare? Yep, "all that glisters is not gold" is a quote from
Shakespeare's, "Merchant of Venice." Now isn't that exciting? So we're having a contest between my three classes (my grade nines are reading "Romeo and Juliet" and my grade tens are reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream") to see which class can find the most Shakespeare references (or allusions) in pop culture. This could get fun. It's my response to the old "why do we have to read some play that we don't understand by some dead guy?" That, and the universal themes about humanity. We'll see how it goes. If you think of some good ones, feel free to post them. ("10 Things I Hate About You" doesn't count.)
4 comments:
I think I should know these...but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
He didn't turn on the lights, but he showed them to us after we got out of the car...
How's wedding planning going?
I'm pretty sure that there are way more references to Merchant of Venice than to Midsummers night Dream but I could be wrong (its been known to happen:)
merchant of venice is good, too.
lol...i know...it's so annoying, btw. J/k.
I'm done now. You share good points.
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