Spectacular Shakespeare in The Spectacular Spider Man (Part One)

"Growing Pains." By Nicole Dubuc and Stan Lee. Perf. Josh Keaton, Daran Norris, James Arnold Taylor, Ben Diskin, Jeff Bennett, Lacey Chabert, and Grey DeLisle. Dir. Michael Goguen. The Spectacular Spider-Man. Season 2, episode 6. Kids' WB! 22 February 2009. DVD. Sony Pictures, 2010.

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On 18 June 2010, an alert reader wrote to tell me about another source for Shakespeare in popular culture: the animated television program The Spectacular Spider-Man. In well under a year's time, I tracked down the material he mentioned, viewed it, digested it, and reported on my findings. Well, I'm about to report on my findings.

The show's use of Shakespeare falls into the "thoughtful and revealing" category rather than the "merely parasitical." One indication of this care is the quotations themselves. They are not all taken from a "Top Ten Shakespeare Quotes" list somewhere. In conjunction with that, the quotes also speak to the larger issues of the show—particularly of characterization. I haven't made myself intimately aware of the details of the show's world, but it's clear enough that the quotes they deliver work on more than one level.

For example, take a look at this video clip. Peter Parker's high school is about to mount a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and they're holding auditions. Brief glimpses of the hopeful actors punctuate the episode's action. In keeping with our Macbeth theme, the first quote comes from that play—and it begins the entire episode:

The episode provides quotations from six different plays—Hamlet, as you might expect, gets three of the eight quotes:

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

—Macbeth, IV.i.44-45

Presume not that I am the thing I was,
[For] I have turned away my former self.

—2 Henry IV, V.v.56, 58

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

—Othello, II.iii.262-64

Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider,
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
Fool, fool! . . . The day will come [to] curse [this venemous] bunchback'd toad.

—Richard III, I.iii.241-45

O villain, villain, smiling, [cursed] villain!
That one [might] smile and smile and be a villain.
[Go, Villain! Whoo! Yeah!]

—Hamlet, I.v.106, 108

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

—Hamlet, II.ii.116-19

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

—Measure for Measure, II.ii.107-09

I will be brief. Your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

—Hamlet, II.ii.92-94

All in all, the audition scenes span an extraordinary range—one that is entirely comprehensible—and it sets its quotations in a context that reveals something of their consistent relevance.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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