Shakespeare and Advertising

‘How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the Cornish pasties of this world! / Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,’

Of course, nowadays, Shakespearean scholars are slowly coming to acknowledge the commercial basis for much of the bard’s work, especially the plays. The above quotation for Honest Rosencrantz’s ‘Real Meat’ Cornish Pasties is but one example along with, of course, the famous further quote from the same play extolling the virtues of Guildenstern’s Pencils, the 2B in particular.

Obviously, back in those days there was no Arts Council, or any such diversion of taxpayers’ money into what the great and good of the arts world thought ordinary folk ought to be made to like – or, at least - pay for. Instead, there were such things as patronage, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis poem, for example, was dedicated to a patron: the Earl of Southampton, and used by the Earl as advertisements for a dating agency he had set up to enable the sons and daughters of the Elizabethan gentry to meet each other.

However, Shakespeare’s plays were a different matter.

In later years, Shakespeare and his company of players were paid a certain amount of money for some of their plays by royalty: both Queen Elizabeth I and, later, James I. Unfortunately, this was not enough to even cover the costs of staging a play, especially with the price of theatrical doublets. Therefore, like modern commercial TV, Shakespeare used both commercials and sponsorship to provide the money necessary to get his plays on stage.

One of the earliest of Shakespeare’s successful in-play adverts was the line: 'what light though yonder window breaks? It must be a Capulet's candle to shine so brightly.' in Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare’s use of advertising in his plays reached its artistic peak in his play dedicated to Macbeth's Original Scotch Broth. From its list of the famous secret ingredients, herbs and spices hinted at as the witches prepare a cauldron of the broth, right through to what many playgoers regarded as the advertising slogan of the year:

'Is this a soup spoon I see before me. All the better for a spoonful of Macbeth's Original Scotch Broth – the taste thee'll never forget, even when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane!'

Towards the end of Shakespeare’s writing career, The Tempest was sponsored initially by a company producing what they called ‘the most powerful laxative powders’ then on the market, with the advertising slogan:

Enough to cause a Tempest in your closet.

So successful was this commercial link up it enabled William Shakespeare to retire to a house in the country soon afterwards and live a life of comparative luxury right up to his death in 1616.