#general reference

This 2001 Jay-Z track contains a Shakespeare reference that is not uttered by Jay himself, but rather featured rapper Eminem. On his verse, Eminem compares his artistry to that of the legendary playwright; he raps, “See, I’m a poet to some, a regular modern day Shakespeare.” Eminem calls upon Shakespeare to legitimize his talent to his critics, who dismiss his art as overly vulgar. Yet it is significant that Eminem, a white rapper, declares Shakespeare-level genius points while Jay-Z, a black rapper, does not; this points to the white rapper’s freedom to associate himself with such cultural authorities (Hansen 229). 

The title of this Smiths track is a reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own,” where she imagines that Shakespeare had a sister named Judith. Woolf hypothesizes that, even if Judith were equally talented as her brother, she would have gotten little to no recognition due to her gender. The song’s lyrics depict a protagonist who feels trapped by the expectations of their family (”So, please don’t stand in my way/Because I’m going to meet the one I love/No, Mamma, let me go”). Morrissey is perhaps comparing his own feelings of isolation to those of Shakespeare’s fictional sister. He could also be saying that, like Judith, his art is under-appreciated by the public.

This Shakespeare reference comes in the song’s title: “Stratford-On-Guy” is a play on Shakespeare’s hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon. Though Shakespeare allusions are not present in the song’s lyrics, the title—which was previously “Bomb”—is significant. Phair mused on the title of "Stratford-On-Guy" in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone:

When I lived in England as a young seven-year-old, and we went to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit where Shakespeare lived. [The name came from] the whole pretentiousness of the guy scene that Urge Overkill dubbed Guyville and we all ended up calling Guyville. That preciousness of it was really important to the tastemakers who lived there, and I wanted to give it that kind of pretentious name like [in British accent] “Stratford-On-Guy.” [Laughs]

Exile on Guyville is an album about Phair’s reclamation of the male-dominated indie rock scene. Phair, then, ties Shakespeare into this motif. Phair reclaims the pretentiousness of Shakespeare but not by referencing any of his specific works, but rather the town in which he was born. Though obviously Shakespeare could not choose this location himself, Phair seems to be deriding Shakespeare as so pretentious that seemingly everything about him perpetuates our patriarchal culture, even something as seemingly innocuous as his birthplace. By choosing to name-drop Stratford Upon Avon rather than directly quoting or even mentioning a Shakespeare character, Phair is also making referencing Shakespeare strikingly unpretentious—while few people remember specific lines from Richard III or Hamlet, nearly anyone above middle school age could recognize Phair's allusion.