Imagine, like, thousands of screaming fans, right?
Traveling across the country, just totally obsessing
over every single word written by their idol.
Oh, absolutely. Buying up all the merchandise,
too. Yes. Buying the merch, defending their favorite
creator against any critics, and, you know, treating
a completely ordinary hometown like its literal
holy ground. Right. Which sounds exactly like
modern Stan culture. Exactly. When I say that,
you are probably picturing internet message boards
or pop star stadium tours or maybe massive sci
-fi conventions. Yeah, that's where the mind
goes. But what if I told you the blueprint for
this kind of intense, massive, almost hysterical
fandom wasn't invented on the internet? It's
a wild thought. It really is. What if I told
you the exact architectural machinery for how
we obsess over culture today was engineered in
1769 by a guy who wrote a gentle acoustic song
about a river? It sounds like a stretch, I know,
but it is entirely accurate. We have this tendency
to view all -consuming fandom as this uniquely
modern phenomenon. You know, maybe dating back
to the boy bands of the mid -20th century or
the rise of social media. Right, we think we
invented it. Exactly. But the mechanics, the
way you take a piece of entertainment and elevate
it into a full -blown lifestyle, those were actually
mapped out centuries ago. And today, for our
deep dive, we are looking at the exact artifact
that proves it. We are. It's a single, extremely
brief Wikipedia entry about an 18th century piece
of music called Soft Flowing Avon. Such an unassuming
title, too. Totally. And while you, the listener,
might be bracing yourself for a dry, dusty history
lesson about classical sheet music, you are actually
about to hear the origin story of modern mega
fandom. It really is the ground zero for it.
Our mission today is to uncover how this one
specific song from the year 1769 encapsulates
a massive tectonic shift in popular culture.
Okay, let's unpack this. Let's do it. We need
to start with the event itself. Right. And the
absolute powerhouses who put it together because
this wasn't just like some local tavern talent
show. Oh, far from it. Yeah. The creation of
soft -flowing Avon was a highly orchestrated
cultural event. Yeah. You have this song. written
in 1769 with the music composed by Thomas Arne
and the lyrics penned by David Garrick. Right.
And they didn't just write this for fun on a
weekend. They created this piece specifically
for and debuted it at the Shakespeare Jubilee
in Stratford -upon -Avon. Now, to put this in
perspective, for anyone not familiar with 18th
century British theater, Arne and Garrick teaming
up is not a casual collaboration. Not at all.
Imagine two of the absolute biggest modern music
and entertainment superstars teaming up today.
Yeah, like the biggest names you can think of.
Right. But instead of collaborating for a massive
global stadium tour in, you know, major capitals,
they decide to headline a dedicated, hyper -specific
tribute festival in a small rural hometown. It's
a fascinating choice. It is. Because Stratford
-upon -Avon is, famously, the birthplace of William
Shakespeare. But holding a jubilee there, that
word carries weight, doesn't it? It carries an
immense amount of weight. Historically, a jubilee
implies something almost sacred. Okay. Yeah,
it's a term usually reserved for royal anniversaries
or profound religious milestones. It implies
a moment of grand societal reverence. Right.
So by labeling this event a jubilee and staging
it in the very physical space where Shakespeare
was born, Garrick and Aron aren't just throwing
a party. No. They are essentially consecrating
the ground, aren't they? Exactly. They were making
a very calculated geographic claim. They were
telling the public that Shakespeare's birthplace
wasn't just a town on a map where a playwright
happened to grow up. It was a site of cultural
pilgrimage. It's the 18th century equivalent
of creating a Mecca for literature lovers. Which
is incredible. You don't just read the plays
anymore. You must physically travel to the soil
where the genius was forged. Which is such a
massive flex when you think about it. You are
taking a playwright, a guy whose literal job
was to write commercial entertainment for the
rowdy masses, and elevating his hometown to the
status of a holy site. It's a complete paradigm
shift. But hold on, this brings me to a huge
question I have about the music itself. Sure.
Because if you look at the composer Thomas Arne,
his involvement here feels, honestly, it feels
completely mismatched when you look at his resume.
Well, his catalog is certainly intimidating,
to say the least. I'm looking at his catalog
right here, and I am trying to wrap my head around
his involvement. It's not just a few operas.
He did Comus in 1738. A major foundational work.
Right, and then he does Alfred in 1740, Eliza
in 1754, Thomas and Sally in 1760. The output
is staggering. Wait, in 1762 alone, he drops
both Art of Xerxes and Love in a village. in
the same year. He was incredibly prolific. And
you have to understand, these aren't small, intimate
chamber pieces. Yeah. These are grand, sweeping,
epic theatrical events. They require massive
staging, complex vocal arrangements, and serious
dramatic weight. And he doesn't stop. Later,
he does The Fairy Prince in 1771 and The Cooper
in 1772. But here is the absolute kicker for
me. Oh, I know where you're going with this.
In 1740, this is the exact same composer who
wrote Rule Britannia. Arguably one of the most
famous chest thumping nationalistic anthems in
British history. It is the heavyweight champion
of imperial anthems. It is huge. It is loud.
It is literally about dominating the oceans and
ruling the waves. It is the sound of an empire.
So what does this all mean? Why would a composer
who spends decades writing these massive world
conquering national anthems and a slew of epic
mythological operas suddenly pivot to writing
soft -flowing Avon. It does seem like a stark
contrast. Because if you look at the source,
the lyrics to the 1769 song are just, you know,
a gentle tribute to the local river flowing through
Stratford. It is entirely localized and pastoral,
yes. But doesn't that risk making the whole event
look ridiculous? Have you mean? I mean, if Hans
Zimmer suddenly shows up to score a local high
school play, people don't think the play is suddenly
a Hollywood blockbuster. They just think Hans
Zimmer lost a bet. That's a great analogy. Right.
It feels like the guy who composed a national
anthem is suddenly dropping an acoustic indie
track about a local creek. How did Arne pull
this off without it feeling like a massive mismatch?
Well, what's fascinating here is the psychological
weight of that exact contrast. OK. You have to
look at what happens when you apply high art,
opera level composition, to a highly localized
geographical tribute. Right. Arne wasn't stepping
down to write a simple folk song. He was bringing
the full, undeniable prestige of his operatic
background to the River Avon. Wait, slow down.
So you're saying he didn't adjust his status
to fit the river, he forced the river to fit
his status? Precisely. By having the composer,
Ruel Britania, write the music for this jubilee,
the organizers instantly gave the event profound
national importance. Think about the messaging.
We aren't just bringing a local fiddler to play
a tune about a local boy. We are bringing the
architect of the British Imperial Sound to consecrate
this water. That is wild. It signaled to the
entire country that the River Avon, and by extension,
William Shakespeare's legacy, was just as important,
just as majestic, as the grand mythological subjects
of Aaron's operas. or even the British Empire
itself. That is a brilliant piece of PR. It completely
bypasses logic and goes straight for the emotions.
It really does. It's like saying we aren't celebrating
a guy who wrote some plays, we're celebrating
a national deity, and we hired the guy who writes
music for empires to prove it. And when you successfully
engineer the creation of a cultural deity, the
worship of that deity cannot be contained to
a small rural town. Obviously not. The prestige
was simply too great, and frankly, too profitable.
It had to expand. And it absolutely did, because
according to the sources, this little song didn't
stay in Stratford -upon -Avon. No, it didn't.
Soft -flowing Avon eventually packed its bags
and made its way to the big city. It became a
key part of the Shakespeare pageant, which was
performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in London.
Which represents a monumental shift in the lifespan
and function of this song. It really is. Moving
from the Stratford Jubilee to the Drury Lane
Theater is essentially like taking a cool grassroots
indie arts festival held out in the woods and
adapting it into a massive Broadway spectacle
in Times Square. That's exactly the scale we're
talking about. You are taking a site -specific
tribute, a song literally written about the specific
river in Shakespeare's hometown, and performing
it for a massive metropolitan audience who, let's
be honest, may never have even seen that river
in their lives. What you are seeing here is the
commodification of an aesthetic. OK, say more
about that. They took the pastoral, almost mythical
essence of Shakespeare's origins and packaged
it for mass consumption on the largest theatrical
stage available. Okay, translate that for me.
You mean they took the muddy physical reality
of this rural river, cleaned it up, slapped a
ticket price on it, and sold the vibe to wealthy
Londoners who just wanted to feel connected to
the countryside. That is exactly what they did.
The London audience didn't need to step foot
in the mud of Stratford upon Avon. Right. They
could sit in a plush velvet chair at Drury Lane,
listen to Thomas Arne's glorious high art composition
and feel the exact same religious reverence for
Shakespeare's hometown. The song acted as a bridge.
And here's where it gets really interesting.
Our source material explicitly points out that
this song and the Jubilee itself were key parts
of a growing 18th century culture known as Bardolatry.
Yes. Which just as a word is incredible. It's
a wonderful, highly revealing portmanteau. You
have bard, referring to Shakespeare, of course.
Idolatry. Referring to the absolute unquestioning
worship of idols. Bardolatry. Exactly, Bardolatry.
It is the literal religious worship of a secular
writer. Which sounds extreme, but when you look
at the source material, Specifically, Robert
Shaughnessy's The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare
and popular culture, it becomes crystal clear
that this wasn't an accident. Not at all. This
wasn't just people liking a play. This was a
genuine engineered cultural movement. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, the Shaughnessy reference
proves that this was the exact moment Shakespeare
ceased to be just a respected historical playwright.
Right. Before this jubilee, his plays were performed.
Sure, they were liked. people respected the writing.
But soft -flowing Avon, the Jubilee, the pageant
to True Relayne, these engineered events helped
turn him into a foundational pillar of pop culture.
They completely rebranded him. They did. They
shifted the focus from the work to the man, and
specifically the myth of the man. They didn't
just want you to watch Hamlet or Macbeth and
go home. They wanted you to buy into the entire
lifestyle of Shakespeare. They wanted you to
revere the ground he walked on, literally the
water he lived next to. Think about your own
favorite fandom right now. It's a great exercise.
Yeah, whether you are obsessing over the deep
hidden lore of a massive sci -fi universe, analyzing
every single lyric of a pop star's new album
for secret meanings, or traveling to a specific
random city just because your favorite movie
was filmed there. We all do it. We do. The architectural
blueprint for that kind of obsessive, deeply
personal cultural worship was being drafted right
here in the 18th century with a song about a
river. And that emotional connection is the mechanism
that makes it all work. Soft Flowing Avon is
brilliant because it feels intimate. Yeah. It's
not a song about Shakespeare's grand towering
literary achievements. It's a gentle song about
the river of his childhood. It deliberately creates
a parasocial relationship. Oh, that's such a
good way to put it. The audience in London feels
an emotional pastoral connection to a man they
never met, facilitated by a catchy, beautifully
composed piece of music. They feel like they
know him. It's wild to think about. We so often
assume that modern stand culture is a brand new
phenomenon fueled entirely by social media algorithms
and screen time. But they were doing the exact
same thing at the Drillane Theater in 1769. They
were gathering in massive crowds to essentially
fanboy over a playwright who had been dead for
over a century. Oh, you really were. And singing
a song specifically designed by the era's greatest
musical fit maker to make them feel deeply personally
connected to his hometown. It is an absolute
masterclass in cultural engineering, but there's
one final lingering detail in this source material
that I think profoundly reframes this entire
deep dive. Oh, what's that? I feel like we've
covered the song, the composer, the theater,
the fandom. What are we missing? Well, we've
spent this entire time talking about Thomas Arne
as this grand, almost intimidating architect
of high culture, right? Yeah. He is the maestro
using his epic operatic genius to elevate a local
river and turn William Shakespeare into a literal
deity. But the source notes one more composition
by Arne written just a few years later in 1777.
Okay, let me look at the source again. Ah, yes,
A Hunting We Will Go. Exactly. A Hunting We Will
Go. Wait, the A Hunting We Will Go. Like the
children's song. The little nursery rhyme, too.
Very same. We're kidding? I am not. It is a catchy...
incredibly simple, almost viral, everyday tune.
So this raises a profoundly important question
for us to consider. Okay, lay it on me. If a
massive, high art cultural movement like Bartolotry,
the literal sanctification of a playwright, was
fueled by the exact same composer who would quickly
pivot to writing a simplistic earworm hunting
song. Yeah. What does that say about the engineers
of high culture? That is, wow. That actually
makes you rethink the entire machinery behind
what we consider prestige. It really does. Because
we like to think that high art and low pop culture
exist in two completely different universes.
We think the people who write grand national
anthems and consecrate cultural deities are operating
on some elevated spiritual plane. Right. But
you're saying it's the exact same guy pulling
the levers for both. Precisely. Perhaps the ultimate
maestros of history aren't just those who can
create untouchable divine idols. Yeah. Perhaps
the true geniuses, the ones who really shape
society, are those who can seamlessly pull the
strings of both ends of the human spectrum. God
is fascinating. They can craft profound sacred
worship one moment and simple viral entertainment
the next. They understand that the human brain
craves the holy pilgrimage just as much as it
craves the catchy jingle. It is all ultimately
about manipulating emotion. And sometimes the
blueprint for both the sacred pilgrimage and
the catchy jingle can be found in the exact same
place. Exactly. You walk into the museum expecting
to find a dusty forgotten 18th century artifact,
just a simple gentle song about a soft flowing
river. But what you actually find is the master
switch for pop culture itself. Still humming
with energy, still shaping the way we obsess,
idolize and sing along today.