Is it common to remember faces of long dead people?

And they all had a wig back then anyway.

They are also less likely to recognise Julius Caesar. And guess what - they both dead and not exactly on the top of the news.

Getting a time machine so I can catch Shakespeare up on 35 years of Sonic lore so he can write 16 different kinds of fire ass plays of varying genres.

Looking forward to Shadow soliloquies

This isn't even about Shakspear's plays, it's about his physical appearance.

Not exactly a useful metric.

Romeo: O, let us hence; I gotta go fast.

Shakespeare doesn't even recognize a Sega Genesis, even though it does what Nintendon't!

Sonic is designed to be highly recognisable and interacting with Sonic media necessary means you see Sonic a whole lot, even seeing just a few adverts for the franchise is already enough to make you remember it. Shakespeare's looks are known only on the basis of a couple of portraits, most of which are probably not even based on Shakespeare's looks directly, and they're all completely irrelevant for interacting with Shakespeare's work.

Wait, this is about physical appearance?

Shakespeare comes from a time before cameras, obviously. But, not only that, there were no portraits of him painted in his lifetime. And to add to the confusion, there were no physical descriptions made of him during his lifetime. The only information we have on what he looked like come from about a decade after his death. One is an engraving, the other is a (IMO) low quality bust from his funerary monument. In addition, Shakespeare is such a generic-looking guy of his time that there are portraits of other people that were misidentified as being portraits of Shakespeare because they feature slim white guys with goatees in a ruffle collar.

Compare that to Sonic. He's a character that was designed to stand out visually, and one where the company that makes Sonic games is still, to this day, generating new media with photos and videos of him.

So, if an actual portrait of Shakespeare were discovered and shown to Shakespeare experts, I think even then there's a decent chance they'd more easily recognize Sonic. After all, a "Shakespeare expert" isn't an expert on what he looked like. They're an expert on his writing.

Needs must I hie with great haste!

Gotta go fast

Which is more recognizable 🤔

That is my one GenX/Millenial complaint. We used to have a common literary background up until just into 2000, at least in the US. We all read Shakespeare and Chaucer. Beowulf, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird. We all had a similar base to start from.

Then I saw a short on YouTube where a 40 something man said to his wife "No, sir. I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir." So many comments of people being totally lost as his statement seemed out of nowhere and when people read explanations they still didn't get it. It perfectly fit the situation AND it was not scripted as the wife was trying to show him being an ass (in a teasing way).

Do you know what a Catch-22 is? If not then you are missing common phrases you would have learned in english class had you attended up to the year 2000.

I am Cinna the Poet!

I think a lot of people would change their minds about Shakespeare if you explain some of the dirty jokes to them.

considering that shakespear's plays were written in early modern English- which is basically an entirely different language than we speak today... the vast majoriity of people alive today would never actually recognize one.

A translation of one, sure. but nope. they probably wouldn't even understand it.

Shakespeare gotta improve his inflation game.

Shakespeare the hedgehog

To be fair, overhyped bawdy plays from hundreds of years ago are boring AF nowadays.