Blackwell Reference Online

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In order to be marketed to film audiences and those responsible for teaching Shakespeare, reverence for the text and the author are prerequisites. This may provide us with the vital clue as to why Shakespeare on screen has made it into the canon.Cartmell (1999: 37)I don't like Shakespeare.Richard Loncraine cited in Crowdus (1998: 46)As Sir Ian McKellen's grinning Richard of Gloucester weaves his way through the formal ball in celebration of his brother's succession to the throne, ducking the gliding couples who spin past him, a graceful thirties chanteuse, complete with kiss-curl and under the direction of a conductor who looks more than a little like Glenn Miller, croons a musical version of Christopher Marlowe's lyric, “Come live with me and be my love.” The lyric was first published in the anthology The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, and included in Englands Helicon the following year. Its popularity gave rise to a series of imitations, responses, and parodies. Marlowe's own murderous Ithamore tempts the whore, Bellamira, in The Jew of Malta (ca. 1589), with a catalog of earthly delights, concluding his seduction with “Thou in those groves, by Dis above, / Shalt live with me and be my love” (4.2.101–2). John Donne's weird piscatory rewriting, “The Bait,” was published in 1612 and Izaak Walton included a version of the lyric in the second edition of The Compleat Angler (1655) over ... log in or subscribe to read full text