On Dan Pope's "The Bard Crichton"

Dan Pope’s “The Bard Crichton” takes quotes about William Shakespeare and Michael Crichton, substituting references to either name for Crichton’s name. The result is not only hilarious, but it also sharply criticizes the “high” and “low” literature. 

As you read the quotes, a process of understanding occurs that shifts the way the quotes are perceived. One can not directly say to whom the quotes are originally attributed to (with the exception of ones that would be deemed anachronistic in the current form), but the original sense, that it is silly to say the things we normally say about Shakespeare in regards to Michael Crichton, is a notion that itself becomes dispelled. There is no language reserved for Shakespeare. By the time we get to a quote such as “There’s so much we don’t understand about Michael Crichton. His inner life. We know nothing.” It becomes apparent that that is true of anyone at anytime. It demystifies the idea of Shakespeare as that God beyond the common man’s comprehension.

One of my favorites is, “There are people who live all their lives and never read Crichton. Crichton is in them. It can be a deep humiliation when we realize that our own emotions are actually Crichton’s.” The first sentence is true of both Crichton and Shakespeare. And further, it is likely true of the person who wrote it (likely about Shakespeare), that he hadn’t read Crichton.   The distinction is a gulf that opens wide between the classes, with those who read Crichton and those who read Shakespeare. But lastly, the rest of the quote assigns to Shakespeare a status as of a god, as if the emotions he depicts belonged to him, and he were not drawing from the human experience, and we are drawing from his ideas rather than the whole of human existence.