We've had occasion to think about some of the Shakespeare in The Gilmore Girls (for which, q.v.), and there's doubtless much more.
One that caught my eye happens in Season Three.
In this scene, Lorelai and Rory have gone to dinner with a Harvard alumnus and his family—just to see if Rory would find Harvard a better fit than Yale for her undergraduate studies. While there, they witness the family's dinnertime routine: Pop quizzes. They start with a little Shakespeare.
Watch this clip and see if you can spot the Gilmore Girls' goof regarding Shakespeare:
There's nothing wrong with the "one fell swoop" analysis—Macduff says it in Macbeth when he grapples with the news of his family's murder: "What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam / At one fell swoop?" (IV.iii.218–19).
And there's nothing wrong with the son's answer about Falstaff. He did appear in multiple plays: 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
But the father's correction is erroneous. Falstaff, rather famously, does not appear in Henry V, though the epilogue to 2 Henry IV promises that he'll be in the next play:
One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloy'd with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France, where (for any thing I know) Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already 'a be kill'd with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died [a] martyr, and this is not the man. (2 Henry IV, E.26–32)
It seems to me that there are two possibilities for this goof. One is that the writers slipped, not remembering that Falstaff isn't in Henry V. That's understandable enough. Even Homer nods.
The other possibility is more subtle. The writers may have been looking for a way to pop the pomposity of this preposterous prat. Perhaps his goof implies that our Harvard graduate got his Henry V knowledge from watching the Kenneth Branagh film rather than by reading the play. It gives us, as the audience, a brief moment to feel superior to these unsympathetic characters.
Either way, it's always delightful to find a little Shakespeare peppered in to a show of this caliber.
Note: I'll leave it to you to look up all the Oldcastle material.
Links: The Episode at IMDB.
Click below to purchase the complete series (!) from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
