Once again, I've unfortunately run into a YouTube killjoy who has disabled embedding on their videos. For an amusing twenty second clip, click here:
This is an excerpt from Peep Show, my favourite English comedy show and one of my top favourites overall. The show explores the mindset of two thirty-somethings sharing a flat in Croydon, and is known for deriving humour from psychologically dark and uncomfortable subject matter. In this clip, perpetually jobless drug user Jeremy has begun to turn over a new leaf, claiming he is in love with neighbour Elena. Mark, ever sardonic and pessimistic, is highly skeptical. Unable to describe his emotions with his own words, Jez attempts, as so many have before him, to invoke the words of Shakespeare without really understanding how:
"What was it Shakespeare said?"
"He said a lot of things, Jeremy."
"He basically said something about how there are more things there than there are actual things that you can see with your eyes. That's not the exact quote."
It's interesting that if you ask somebody to quote Shakespeare, a large number of people will not fully understand the context of their own reply. For example, "To be or not to be" is often quoted by people, but how many of them know that this line refers to Hamlet's decision whether or not to kill himself? In the clip, Jeremy tries to relate what he thinks are highly romantic feelings through the use of a Shakespeare quote that doesn't even exist; his effort to appear to have cultural capital only serves to undermine his own intelligence. Peep Show is full of clever social criticism like this and I heartily recommend it to any fan of sharp and biting humour that examines the mental state of the modern man.
I interpreted this as Jeremy trying to remember "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Although it's a little ambiguous, I wonder if there is a Shakespeare quote that would be a better fit to Jeremy's description?
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