In this episode, the Shakespeare is very subtle. In one line, we get an intimation of a famous line from Romeo and Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other [name] would smell as sweet" (II.ii.43–44). Joe Coogan's line here alludes to that line: "Maybe Shakespeare was wrong—maybe there is something in a name."
Joe's speech lets us know that the implied reader / implied viewer of a Dick Van Dyke Show episode would have enough familiarity with Juliet's speech to make the leap from "What we call things doesn't matter—it's the essence of the thing itself that we value" to "Actually, maybe if enough people value specific instances of something called by a general name, we will start to value the thing because of the name." The intimation of Shakespeare's line gives us a number of implications about its application.
Links: The Episode at IMDB.
Here's the scene:
We arrive at the point of realizing that there are a lot of adorable Lauras in the world—and then we find that we're not talking about Lauras in general or even about two distinct Lauras. It's the specific Laura who married Rob Petrie who's under consideration.
That immediately makes Rob become jealous and perceive Joe as a potential threat. Once Rob leaves, we learn that Joe is a priest (evidently a Roman Catholic priest) and is no threat at all.
I admire the subtle use of Shakespeare here and the way it takes us on intellectual wings of thought as it questions the unquestionable!
Note: If you want to get down in the weeds, it's the 1597 Q1 of Romeo and Juliet that has "name" as the operative word. Q2 (1599) has "word," as does the First Folio of 1623. But whether you're familiar with "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" or "a rose by any other word would smell as sweet," the meaning is the same. After all, what's in a word?
Links: The Episode at IMDB.
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