Shakespeare in Advertising? Love it. Sometimes. Not often.

I saw this article from AdLand about Shakespeare's influence in advertising  and thought I'd see some examples of the occasional "Wherefore art thou?" reference stuck into a commercial. Imagine my surprise when the first one in the list, for 501 jeans, was a verbatim enactment of the Bottom's transformation from Midsummer Night's Dream!


There are more than a dozen video clips, and I have not watched them all.  Some are very old, some I've seen.  I think the embedded one above might well be the best, simply out of its respect for the text. But go check them out for yourself, there's plenty to pick from.  Shakespeare in the Park, trying to teach Hamlet to the squirrels, was sort of cute in a bad pun sort of way.