Shakespeare and Star Trek

William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, had previously acted in several Shakespearean plays, including Julius Caesar as Mark Antony.^{[4]: 246 [11]} When Shakespearean actor Christopher Plummer in the mid-1950s played the title role in Henry V in Stratford, Ontario, Shatner was his understudy, and successfully filled in for him one night when he was ill.^{[5]: 3 [12]} According to Shatner, that was the night he knew he was an actor.^[13] Plummer later commented: "He didn't do what I did at all. Where I stood up to make a speech, he sat down. He did the opposite of everything I did. And I knew that son of a bitch was going to be a star."^[14] Shatner's 1968 album The Transformed Man included readings from Shakespearean plays.^[1]: 20

Kirk says that Shakespeare is his favorite author.^[8]: 230 The episodes "The Conscience of the King" and "Catspaw" included scenes from Shakespearean plays.^{[1]: 176 [4]: 223 [15]} In "Requiem for Methuselah" the immortal Flint possesses a First Folio, and together with "Is There in Truth No Beauty?", the episode borrows from The Tempest.^[16][10] In "Bread and Circuses" the character Claudius Marcus wears Shakespeare's coat of arms on his robe.^[17] The titles of the episodes "All Our Yesterdays," "By Any Other Name," "The Conscience of the King," and "Dagger of the Mind" are all lines from Shakespeare.^[18]

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan shares themes with King Lear, and the play can be seen on the antagonist Khan Noonien Singh's bookshelf.^[19][20] In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Leonard McCoy, doubting Spock's restored faculties, at one point mutters "Angels and ministers of grace, defend us", which Spock immediately identifies as "Hamlet, act I, scene IV".^[21]

The subtitle of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) is also a Shakespeare line, from Hamlet.^[a] In this film, the Klingons appreciate Shakespeare greatly, and General Chang (Christopher Plummer), the film's antagonist, quotes him extensively.^[23] Director Nicholas Meyer, a Shakespeare enthusiast, found inspiration for the character by listening to a CD with Plummer performing from Henry V.^[14][24] Shakespeare scholar Kay H. Smith^[25] says "Everybody in our ever-widening English-speaking world is expected to recognize a little Shakespeare, and Star Trek VI makes it easy by assigning almost all the quotations to one character, so we can all play the game," and that combining high and low culture can be fruitful as well as problematic.^{[25]: 141, 148}

Like several of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Chang is a "military aristocrat",^{[23]: 36 [26]} and Plummer reprised the role in the computer game Star Trek: Klingon Academy (2000), where Chang gives the player's missions Shakespearean names.^[27][28] In the film, while attacking the Enterprise, Chang's Shakespeare quotations become so abundant that Leonard McCoy exclaims "I'd give real money if he'd shut up!" According to Smith, McCoy echoes the feelings of those in the audience who have experienced bad performances, bad teachers, and a "cultural establishment that insists on defending the cause of Shakespearean hegemony while simultaneously commodifying it". She says that Plummer's Chang has potential to be a great villain like Richard III, but falls short and becomes flat.^{[25]: 140–141} Rolling Stone and Time have both ranked the character among the 10 greatest Star Trek villains.^[29][30]

Plummer said that while he greatly enjoyed the part of Chang, he regretted that David Warner (Chancellor Gorkon) got what Plummer considered to be the best line in the film, "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon".^[14] Academics have suggested several interpretations of this line, some seeing it as a joke, others as something more serious.^[6]: 38

The film inspired the creation of The Klingon Hamlet (1996), a translation of Hamlet into the constructed Klingon language. Parts of it have been performed by the Washington Shakespeare Company. Much Ado About Nothing (2001) has also been translated.^{[1]: 178 [31]} The translations are put in a framing story where Shakespeare (Wil'yam Shex'pir) actually was a Klingon, and characters like Hamlet (Khamlet), Benedick and Beatrice (B'enerdik and B'eterirsh) are discussed in the context of Klingon culture. In this setting, the English versions are the actual translations, and have acquired the status of originals through a campaign of deception.^{[6]: 40–43} Karolina Kazimierczak, sociologist, compares the Klingon translations to The Maori Merchant of Venice (2002).^[6]: 46

In the 1999 comedy Free Enterprise, Shatner, playing himself, is approached by two trekkies and hopes with their help to produce a musical version of Julius Caesar.^{[1]: 19 [32]}

The Next Generation

When Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) began in 1987, Patrick Stewart was referred to as an "unknown British Shakespearean actor" by the Los Angeles Times. TNG actor Brent Spiner put this "title" on a sign and hung it on Stewart's trailer door. Stewart's Shakespearean background was one aspect that made Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek's creator, consider him for the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.^[33][34] Stewart, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) 1966–1982,^[35] has said: "All the time I spent sitting around on the thrones of England as various Shakespearean kings was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair on the Enterprise".^[2]: 74

Picard keeps a collection of Shakespeare's work titled The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare, and this book is seen frequently throughout the series. It reappeared when Stewart returned to the role in