"It's a perfectly valid position to not like Shakespeare"
About this Quote
Rall’s line lands like a small act of cultural disobedience. Shakespeare isn’t just a writer; he’s a credential. Saying you don’t like him has long been treated less like a taste preference and more like a confession of illiteracy. By calling that stance “perfectly valid,” Rall punctures the quiet moral hierarchy that props up the canon, where approval signals refinement and dissent gets pathologized.
The intent is defensive and liberating at once: a permission slip for ordinary aesthetic honesty. “Not like” is doing surgical work here. It doesn’t argue Shakespeare is bad, overrated, or irrelevant; it refuses the debate on prestige terms. You can recognize the achievement and still bounce off the language, the classroom packaging, the performance conventions, the sheer saturation. The subtext: a lot of “Shakespeare love” is coerced, inherited, or performed - an identity badge pinned on by schools and cultural gatekeepers.
As a cartoonist, Rall’s sensibility matters. Cartooning thrives on deflating pomp, exposing the absurdities of status rituals, and siding with the reader who’s tired of being lectured. The joke isn’t Shakespeare; it’s the social theater around Shakespeare. In an era of omnivorous media and fragmented attention, Rall’s quip also pushes back against the idea that cultural seriousness requires one specific altar. It’s not anti-intellectual. It’s anti-snobbery: the claim that taste can be sincere without needing to be certified.
The intent is defensive and liberating at once: a permission slip for ordinary aesthetic honesty. “Not like” is doing surgical work here. It doesn’t argue Shakespeare is bad, overrated, or irrelevant; it refuses the debate on prestige terms. You can recognize the achievement and still bounce off the language, the classroom packaging, the performance conventions, the sheer saturation. The subtext: a lot of “Shakespeare love” is coerced, inherited, or performed - an identity badge pinned on by schools and cultural gatekeepers.
As a cartoonist, Rall’s sensibility matters. Cartooning thrives on deflating pomp, exposing the absurdities of status rituals, and siding with the reader who’s tired of being lectured. The joke isn’t Shakespeare; it’s the social theater around Shakespeare. In an era of omnivorous media and fragmented attention, Rall’s quip also pushes back against the idea that cultural seriousness requires one specific altar. It’s not anti-intellectual. It’s anti-snobbery: the claim that taste can be sincere without needing to be certified.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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