3 Beatles Songs Influenced by Shakespeare

Paul McCartney’s education in Liverpool included a great deal of literature. One author who influenced the young songwriter was William Shakespeare, whose poetry and rhyming style impacted McCartney’s songwriting. For a few Beatles songs, McCartney went back to his Shakespeare education and used the author as an inspiration. 

Here are 3 Beatles songs influenced by Shakespeare

‘I Saw Her Standing There’

McCartney’s English teacher, Alan Durband, introduced him to several of his literary favorites, including Chaucer and Shakespeare. He read a lot of Shakespeare, some of which would unintentionally make its way into his songwriting. In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, McCartney said Shakespeare may have influenced The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There.”

The song was a collaborative effort between John Lennon and McCartney, but Paul came up with the line “beyond compare.” He isn’t sure where that line came from, but he might have recalled it from Shakespeare’s sonnet 18, which says, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He says it also might have come from an Irish song tradition. 

‘The End’

“The End” is fittingly the final song that all four of The Beatles recorded together. It’s the last song on Abbey Road and ends with the line, “And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make.” McCartney formed these lyrics himself, but the style in which it is written is very Shakespearean. In an interview with Clash, McCartney explained how the final line was written like a rhyming couplet from Shakespeare. 

“I just thought that was a nice line. Someone pointed out to me recently, ‘Ah, it’s a Shakespearean rhyming couplet, which Shakespeare ended all the acts of his plays on,’” McCartney shared. “But I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame. I’d studied, but I don’t remember thinking, ‘Aha yes, let’s end on a rhyming couplet’, but it is, and so, I dunno, just somewhere from my subconscious, I thought, ‘Yeah’, but then I’m sure it was just a very practical thing.”

‘Let it Be’

When McCartney shares the story behind The Beatles’ “Let it Be”, he often says the song was inspired by a dream where he was visited by his mother. However, the track shares a connection to Shakespeare, specifically with Hamlet. McCartney remembered learning Hamlet in English class and said a phrase might have played a role in “Let it Be” subconsciously. 

“One interesting thing about ‘Let It Be’ that I was reminded of only recently is that, while I was studying English literature at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys with my favorite teacher, Alan Durband, I read Hamlet,” McCartney explained in The Lyrics. “In those days, you had to learn speeches by heart because you had to be able to carry them into the exam and quote them. There are a couple of lines from late in the play: ‘O, I could tell you — But let it be. Horatio, I am dead,’ I suspect those lines had subconsciously planted themselves in my memory.”