Thursday, October 25, 2012

Shakespeare in The Lion King—And, No, it's not the Hamlet Stuff

The Lion King. Dir. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. Perf. Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, and James Earl Jones. 1994. Walt Disney Video, 2003.
Yes, plot elements from Hamlet make their way into The Lion King (you can start exploring the idea here). But did you notice a specific quotation from Romeo and Juliet there, too?

It's in the image above:  In Timon and Pumbaa's first big number, Timon sings the "What's in a name?" line.

He also shares a name with the eponymous character in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.  I'm just sayin'!
Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest