Andrew Muir > Quotes

“In Shakespeare’s London, most plays were only performed a handful of times before being discarded and replaced with ‘the latest thing’. This provides a stark contrast to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s schedule in current times. Shakespeare’s theatre, just like the rock music of Dylan’s decades, was inherently influenced by changes in fashion and style. Relentless demands for novelty and hits drove both industries and this had an impact on our two artists in fundamental ways. Just as Dylan went after the latest, but deeply unpleasant, studio sound in the mid-Eighties and jumped, or rather sank, into the pop video market, so Shakespeare had to move into whatever area the current fashion dictated. If plays featuring prostitutes and witches were in demand, then that is what was written. Popular entertainers need to remain fashionable.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“walking it’ to ‘came off it while riding it’. Whatever is the case, Dylan was undoubtedly recovering from the 1966 world tour that nearly killed him and probably would have, had he carried on with it, as originally scheduled. Instead, he was lying low in Woodstock and reading voraciously. Ginsberg says he took the following for Dylan to read: “a box full of books of all kinds. All the modern poets I knew. Some ancient poets like Sir Thomas Wyatt, Campion. Dickinson, Rimbaud, Lorca, Apollinaire, Blake, Whitman and so forth.” Although Ginsberg does not list Shakespeare among the ‘ancient poets’, I am inclined to think he was included in the ‘and so forth’, or at least that Dylan used some of his reading time re-acquainting himself with Shakespeare because we do know that Ginsberg was talking to Dylan about Shakespeare on the phone soon after this visit.35”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Our two writers, then, had to overcome opposition on a personal level as well as attacks upon their chosen professions. Attitudes towards sex, politics, religion, distrust of boisterous enjoyment and financial envy all contributed to the opposing forces. Uncanny parallels are apparent in the harassment and censorship both Shakespeare and Dylan faced and in the ways they confronted and overcame, or circumnavigated, all of them so admirably.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Almost inevitably, all natural phrases of common origin soon begin to take on the hue of a deliberate allusion, if you wish it to do so. However, that way madness lies and one gets excited by the possibility of the line, “And the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time”7 in ‘Chimes of Freedom’ referring to the poet and the painter in Timon of Athens. Still, this reverberation demonstrates how it is impossible not to make such direct connections at times, especially when something chimes so well in your mind.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“This trope is central to many a play by Shakespeare and to a number of central songs by Dylan. One immediately thinks of “you’ll find out when you reach the top you’re on the bottom” from ‘Idiot Wind’ which was to 1975 what ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was to 1965.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“As Dylan noted in a 2011 interview: “One song is always using a line from another song to brace it. But then goes off on another tangent. Minstrels did it all the time. Weird takes on Shakespeare plays, stuff like that. It’s just done automatically.”9”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“In every decade, up to and including until Dylan’s last album, thus far, of self-penned material, 2012’s The Tempest, Shakespeare appears in Dylan’s songs. The Bard of Avon appears in parody, in allusion, in burlesque, as a touchstone, in quotes and intertextuality that ranges from a light touch to being central to a song’s meaning. The same is true of Dylan’s prose and film scripts and, with increasing frequency as the years have passed, Shakespeare has been used by Dylan, in interview, to offer revelatory insight into his own working practice.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Kazuo Ishiguro was pushing for such an expansion in his 1917 Nobel Lecture. After speaking so movingly about the effect singers have on his writing and discussing a film, amidst his literary musings and remembrances, he ended with a plea that serves well as a conclusion to this Nobel Prize section with its comments on future generations, genre and form: “… we must widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from what remain today unknown literary cultures, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities. Second: we must take great care not to set too narrowly or conservatively our definitions of what constitutes good literature. The next generation will come with all sorts of new, sometimes bewildering ways to tell important and wonderful stories. We must keep our minds open to them, especially regarding genre and form, so that we can nurture and celebrate the best of them.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Dylan remarked to biographer Robert Shelton, in 1978: “the myth of the starving artist is just that – a myth”.30 Genius can also be at the beck and call of the need for cold, hard cash. One thinks of Dostoyevsky producing the most extraordinary series of novels in order to settle debts, and of Charles Dickens’ mass-marketed outpouring of the most beautiful quality prose, at a time when it was valued by quantity, and paid by the wordage. As Samuel Johnson prosaically put it: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Both Shakespeare and Dylan prove to be canny operators in the world of commerce. William Burroughs remembered meeting a young Dylan who described himself as having “a knack for writing lyrics” and that he “expected to make a lot of money”.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“As were images of Shakespeare’s times. An eye-witness to Dylan in Australia that same year, remembered that it “was amazing to watch him work on a song. He would have the poetry of it worked out in his head, and he would say to Robbie [Robertson, guitar player]: ‘…just imagine this cat who is very Elizabethan, with garters and a long shepherd’s horn and he’s coming over the hill with the sun behind him. That’s the sound I want.’”14”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“As Stephen Greenblatt put it: “Shakespeare’s plays provide ample evidence for doubleness and more: at certain moments – Hamlet is the greatest example – he seems at once Catholic, Protestant and deeply skeptical of both.”23”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“The connections to Shakespeare’s writing throughout Dylan’s art, in various fields, range therefore from the coincidence of shared culture and vocabulary through the far-fetched and the speculative all the way to reasonably reliable and firmly certain. These links are numerous, as you would expect from someone who declares that: “I’ve been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I’m always starting with that.”4”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“The radio documentary “Shakespeare in American Life” includes an episode by Richard Paul on the African-American experience with Shakespeare called “Shakespeare In Black and White.” It asks the question “Who ‘owns’ Shakespeare?” and Paul begins his piece by contrasting a straight reading of Othello with actors doing the very same lines from Othello: a Burlesque that Dylan uses in “Love and Theft.”24 This is a rewarding listen and is of relevance to both Dylan and Shakespeare scholars as well as to anyone interested in the social history of the United States.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“The comparison has become so commonplace that it can even be expanded and reversed. “Leonard Cohen is John Donne to Bob Dylan’s Shakespeare” declared a headline in The Guardian. Donne is considered later, making this quote from the biography The Ballad of Bob Dylan all the more intriguing: “For two years Zimmerman sat in the front row of Rolfzen’s class, third seat from the door, transfixed by the teacher’s lively Donne and Shakespeare.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“In the Dylan song11, the second and fourth lines are again repeated in each verse: Bad news, bad news came to me where I sleep Turn, turn, turn again Sayin’ one of your friends is in trouble deep Turn, turn to the rain and the wind And again the only stanza to deviate from that is the final one. The Shakespeare song has been adapted and appropriated so many times over the centuries, that this parallel between the two bards, striking as it is, is not necessarily a direct one.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“This chapter has also stressed that Shakespeare and Dylan’s work is grounded in popular entertainment and in pleasing audience. That ‘work’ is both business and artistic. Genius can exist, they prove, alongside commercial acumen and the highest artistry is not incompatible with widespread popularity and live shows.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“There’s always new things to discover when you’re playing live. No two shows are the same. It might be the same song, but you find different things to do within that song which you didn’t think about the night before. It depends on how your brain is hooked up to your hand and how your mind is hooked up to your mouth.”19”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“The first thing to note is how apt an image ‘lifelessness’ is in terms of Dylan’s songs of the period. Lifelessness being a sin perfectly chimes with Dylan’s writing at the time. The hip, visionary Dylan was constantly contrasting the vibrant young with the stagnant and decaying old, and the vital against the lifeless. “He not being busy born, is busy dying.” sang Bob in ‘It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding’)’ in perhaps the most famous of these assertions. It is not, however, a fair depiction of Ophelia as she appears in the play. The Ophelia in Dylan’s song is portrayed as a wrongdoer rather than the victim she is in Hamlet.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Both Shakespeare and Dylan were lambasted for ensuring that their artistic efforts generated money. The more perceptive peers of both Bards would have been intimidated by the quality of the work even as they decried it as worthless, as well as envious of the success. Such jealousy and resentment breeds the same language of denunciation that is mirrored across the centuries. All classes were annoyed at the actors’ successes in Elizabethan time, and they were attacked as being not worthy of the money they earned.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“I’m using the old melodies because they’re there. I like the melodies. Besides, if they can hear the old melodies in my new songs, they’ll accept the songs more. It ain’t the melodies that’re important, man, it’s the words. I don’t give a damn ‘bout melodies.”21”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Moreover, the dramatist himself features in ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again’, from 1966’s Blonde on Blonde: Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley With his pointed shoes and his bells However, nothing of significant import can be read into this. Shakespeare, dressed much like one of the court jesters from his plays, appears as just yet another persona to join a whole range of cultural and historical names that populate the phantasmagoria of Dylan’s mid-sixties lyrics: Ma Rainey, Einstein, Robin Hood, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and so on. Nonetheless, along with other interview and private comments, it does show that the Bard was on his mind.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Other commonplaces go back even further. The proverb we use nowadays, ‘all that glitters is not gold’ is usually traced to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice Act II Scene iv: All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told. The term “glisters” became glitters in time; it is, in effect, the same word. People had indeed ‘often heard that told’, prior to Shakespeare, Chaucer had it as: “Hit is not al gold, that glareth”. So, it was known in English poetry before Shakespeare even got to it. It is such an obvious truth that it is no surprise to discover that earlier civilisations used the same phrase. The Roman poets Shakespeare appears to have immersed himself in, and from whom Dylan, who also studied them at school, liberally quotes, include, amongst their lines, nōn omne quod nĭtet aurum est (‘Not all that glitters is gold’).”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Verse speakers and opera singers could learn a great deal if they listen to all forms of popular music from Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf, where the passion, the feeling, the intonation, the tempo all arise from the word. In Broadway jargon, this is called ‘reading’ a song. I once asked Richard Rodgers, composer of Oklahoma! and countless other musicals, whether he had a stash of melodies in a top drawer, waiting to be used. ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘I need the words.’ Like every composer of songs, it is the words that are proposed by a lyric that awaken the tune”.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“As John Lennon said of Dylan: “I loved him because he wrote some beautiful stuff. I used to love his so-called protest things. But I like the sound of him. I didn’t have to listen to his words. He used to come with his acetate and say, “Listen to this, John. Did you hear the words?” And I said, “That doesn’t matter, just the sound is what counts. The overall thing.” You didn’t have to hear what Bob Dylan’s saying, you just have to hear the way he says it, like the medium is the message.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“KL What is your spiritual stance, then? BD: Well, I don’t think that this is it, you know – this life ain’t nothin’. There’s no way you’re gonna convince me this is all there is to it. I never, ever believed that. I believe in the Book of Revelation. The leaders of this world are eventually going to play God, if they’re not already playing God, and eventually a man will come that everybody will think is God. He’ll do things, and they’ll say, “Well, only God can do those things. It must be him.” KL: You’re a literal believer of the Bible? BD: Yeah. Sure, yeah. I am. KL: Are the Old and New Testaments equally valid? BD: To me. KL: Do you belong to any church or synagogue? BD: Not really. Uh, the Church of the Poison Mind [laughs].”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“As a final example of what we can know amid the speculation, claims and counter claims, we can note Dylan’s comments in his Rolling Stone interview, in 2012, when he said: “These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.” Despite the distinct lack of Christian forgiveness on show, that “our” is surely crucial.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“By 1965, no longer the prince of the protest movement, Dylan was the coolest star in the rock firmament. Notwithstanding this, he sang of ‘Gates of Eden’ on 1965’s Bringing it All Back Home and on the same year’s Highway 61 Revisited, the title track’s opening verse retells a famous biblical passage in modern street language: “Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son” / Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“… Shakespeare was a working dramatist in a very competitive world; he was writing highly topical plays to catch a particular market, and if he did not pull in an audience, the theatrical company in which he had a substantial financial share did not eat that week. What he and his fellows were selling was not a printed book but a heard and seen experience. As a result, he was far more concerned with the design of a very complex system of communication, as a tool to make the audience respond as he wished, than with a merely verbal text.”3”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Shakespeare references, from the passing allusion, embedded quotation, or resonant echo occur throughout Dylan’s lyrics, prose and film scripts. Prior to looking at these, it is worth reiterating that Shakespeare and Dylan have much ‘source material’ in common because they share significant cultural backdrops to their lives and works. Moreover, Dylan studied Shakespeare at school as well as many later poets, themselves inevitably influenced by Shakespeare. Consequently, when you hear an echo between the two in their words, there is always the possibility of a common source such as the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, nursery rhymes, the classics, and the balladeers who preceded both. There are other writers in common, too, from the Classical age and from closer to Shakespeare’s own time.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It

“Dylan sings a potential Hamlet reference on ‘Forgetful Heart’, The door has closed forevermore, perhaps referring to Hamlet’s line: “Let the doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house.” This occurs in Act III Scene I, just after the “get thee to a nunnery” outburst. Dylan source sleuth, Scott Warmuth, pointed out the Hamlet allusions in the closing song from the same album. This was a song to which I had paid insufficient attention, having thought it a mere formulaic, throwaway ‘list song’.”
― Andrew Muir, Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It