advertising. The use of Shakespeare in advertising can be traced back to the adoption of an image based on the Chandos portrait as the publisher Jacob Tonson's trademark in 1710. More recently, some of the more famous characters from Shakespeare's plays have provided manufacturers with richly associative brand names (the tobacco sector alone has given us Hamlet cigars, Romeo Y Julietta panatellas, and Falstaff cigars). Shakespeare's characters also supply television commercials with conveniently familiar dramatic situations which can be rapidly established and then usually debased, for comic effect. Thus King Lear, ready to divide his kingdom, overlooks his two daughters who speak of love and loyalty for a third who offers a supply of ice-cold drinks (Coca-Cola, USA, 1997). Romeo woos Juliet, but only after her rumbling stomach has been prevented from joining in the dialogue (Shreddies Cereals, UK, 2000). Hamlet, about to meditate on Yorick's skull, drops it,...
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