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maddie-grove

Is Mamma Mia! is a lost Shakespeare comedy/romance?

Evidence for:

  • It’s set on an idyllic Mediterranean island.
  • The plot revolves around a bunch of ridiculous misunderstandings.
  • The night of the bachelor and bachelorette parties functions as a “liminal space” that allows the characters to throw off the veneer of civilization and realize things about themselves.
  • A major theme is the return of a loved one who was thought to be lost forever (as in The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale).
  • The timeline is confusing. (Donna appears to have been in some 1960s/1970s-style band at the time of Sophie’s conception, even though Sophie must have been born in the late 1980s; similarly, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, nunneries are mentioned despite the ostensibly ancient Greek setting.) 
  • There are songs.

Evidence against:

  • The dialogue is really bad.
  • There aren’t enough dick jokes.
  • All of the songs are by ABBA, a musical group that was not active in the early modern era.

Conclusion:

  • Shakespeare wrote a comedy/romance with the same plot and characters as Mamma Mia! (called The Three Gentleman Suitors); however, all manuscripts of this play were lost, and the only version that survives is an imperfect illicit transcription of the play by one of his rivals. Through the years, this transcribed version was further changed in accordance with popular tastes (losing the dick jokes in the Victorian Era) and eventually got adapted into an ABBA jukebox musical (mainly because it was in the public domain). 
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the-mad-prince-of-denmark

I hate this because it’s true

#damnit#shakespeare#mamma mia!
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