A real poet: Taylor Swift gets compared to Shakespeare

A renowned Shakespearean scholar, Sir Jonathan Bate compared the pop icon, Taylor Swift to the greatest writer ever in history.

In his new piece for The Sunday Times Magazine titled ‘Why Taylor Swift is a literary giant’, the former Shakespeare professor at Warwick University, termed the singer a ‘real poet’ with the ‘literal sensibility’ evident from her debut album.

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In his writing, Bate recalled ‘one of the best nights of his life’ when he attended a concert of Swift. “Listening to her lyrics, which most of the rapturous (mainly female) audience seemed to know by heart, I came away with confirmation of a thought I first had 15 years ago: this isn’t just high-class showbiz, Taylor Swift is a real poet,” he penned.

 

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The scholar analysed how the great playwright played inspiration for Swift, who succeeded in ‘rewriting his darker moments’ to make them ‘more palatable’, including in one of her several hits, ‘Love Story’.

“You were Romeo, you were throwin’ pebbles/ And my daddy said, ‘Stay away from Juliet’,” Bate said to have spotted the Shakespearean theme first time in Swift’s song. He called it an ‘almost perfect pop song, with its catchy hook, driving rhythm and ingenious use of banjo and mandolin’.

The academic further confessed he had bought the debut album of Swift, ‘Fearless’ the very moment he heard the song and also used it to show his students at Warwick, the change and adaptation in Shakespeare over the years.