Ask a random person if they’ve seen Hamlet, and chances are, they’ll treat it like a yes or no question.

Ask that same person if they’ve seen Batman, and they’ll say, “Which one?”

In the time I’ve been alive, Batman has been portrayed by Adam West, Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Christian Bale, and Robert Patrick (did I miss any?) That’s not counting the animated or television versions. I know Adam West was tv Batman but they also did a full-length movie.

See where I’m going with this? Everybody knows “the Batman story”. Parents murdered when he was young. Grows up to be a crime-fighting billionaire, works at night, has lots of cool toys. Not only do we keep telling his story over and over again, but people keep going. We understand that we basically know the story. We want to see how it’s going to be told this time. We want to see how it’s going to be acted this time.

That is exactly how Shakespeare fans feel about Hamlet. I don’t feel the same way about Moby Dick or Catcher in the Rye. Those were checklist items, you read them and say ok, read that, I’m done. I suppose you could do this with Hamlet. You could read it and say, check, done, I can say I’ve read Hamlet. I know a lot of people make it their bucket list to read all of Shakespeare’s works.

But to see it, that’s a whole different story. Whose did you see? What do you think about Mel Gibson’s version versus David Tennant? Or Andrew Scott up against Benedict Cumberbatch? Thoughts on Kenneth Branagh, or Kevin Kline, or Derek Jacobi?

This is how I want us to explain our love of Shakespeare to our friends and family. Shakespeare’s not something you get through in high school just to get the grade and forget all about it. The text may not be changing, but our desire and opportunity to interpret it has continued to evolve over hundreds of years. A character like Hamlet should be as iconic as Batman. We all know the story. Everybody who’s seen Lion King knows the story. Uncle kills father, marries mother, son avenges father. We go to see how it’s going to be told this time and by whom. What insights will new voices bring? Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear … let them be our superheroes.

Personally, I’m not a huge Beatles fan. I put them in that category where I can acknowledge that they deserve their legendary status in the history of music, but that doesn’t mean when a song of theirs comes on the radio I turn it up. (Except maybe some stuff off the White album.)

So I don’t have all the trivia about where and when the Beatles crossover with Shakespeare. I know there’s a video of some TV skit where they did bits from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And isn’t there a song out there that samples from King Lear? There are probably plenty more that have scooted their way across my radar over the years.

But a headline like “Paul McCartney reveals how Shakespeare inspired Let It Be” is just begging me to click it. One of their most popular songs, inspired by Shakespeare’s most well-known play? And I haven’t heard this story before? Ok, I’m curious.

Right off the bat, the article mentions inspiration at a “subconscious level,” and I think oh, here we go. But then it takes a turn:

“And it had been pointed out to me recently that Hamlet, when he has been poisoned, he actually says, ‘Let it be’ – act five, scene two. He says ‘Let be’ the first time, then the second time he says, ‘Had I but time — as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest — oh, I could tell you. But let it be Horatio.’”

The Beatle concluded: “I was interested that I was exposed to those words during a time when I was studying Shakespeare so that years later the phrase appears to me in a dream with my mother saying it.”

Really? There’s really that one-to-one connection? To The Text!

The second reference is easy to find, starting in Q2. It’s just like he says, right as Hamlet is dying. It’s not in Q1. It’s in FF as well.

But what about that first reference? It’s hard to parse that quote — it sounds like he’s saying that the first time is also in Act V Scene 2, but that’s not correct. He’s basically saying, “Yeah, yeah, he says it once … but the second one is the more famous one.”

That’s because the first one doesn’t really hit the same:

 I pray you all,

If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,

Let it be tenable in your silence still;

Hamlet I.ii

Saying “Let it be” as a complete thought is definitely different from “Let it be this” or “let it be that”.

Still, though. Inspiration confirmed, I guess. Something to add to the Beatles / Shakespeare trivia category.