Monomyth

A quote commonly attributed to Tolstoy is “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” Its provenance and veracity aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about the point it tries to make, that there are only so many possible stories that it is possible to tell. Obviously a few additional possibilities come to mind aside from Tolstoy’s two, the first of which takes place in fair Verona.

Perhaps the best example of story recycling, Romeo and Juliet has spawned so many adaptions that the names of the titular characters are now synonymous with passionate love. Some are classics in their own right, like the 1961 West Side Story, others use the name to hook audiences and set expectations, like Romeo Must Die starring Jet Li and Aaliyah, and a couple are Disney money grabs targeting young children, like High School Musical. Many point to this as evidence of the Bard’s talent for storytelling, but a quick scan of the Wikipedia page explains that the roots of the story are at least as old as Ovid, and other popular iterations existed in Shakespeare’s lifetime.

Shakespeare’s genius then lay not in his ability to invent powerful plots and create unique characters, but in his skill in packaging them into enjoyable experiences for his viewing public. Any high school English teacher or even anyone paying attention in high school can recite that Romeo and Juliet reached the heights of popularity and endured because of Shakespeare’s refinements to its dramatic structure and language. The question is then how much value it still has today…