Shakespeare or Walt Disney?

Mickey Mouse or Macbeth?

As You Like it or Alice in Wonderland?

The Comedy of Errors or the Chronicles of Narnia?

Monsters Inc or A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Twelfth Night or National Treasure? Toy Story or The Tempus?

King Lear or the Lion King?

The Muppets or the Merchant of Venice?

It is time to decide who changed the world more: Walt Disney or William Shakespeare.

Welcome to round one, titled, ‘who’s made more money?’ I’ve decided to start the competition with this subject as whoever has made the most, is more likely to be more popular and therefore done more things to change the world.

William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564. By the time he died in 1616, as I’m sure you’ll all know he created 37 plays and 154 sonnets. He opened the globe theatre where his plays could be performed and by the time he died these had raised £500. In these days, that was a lot of money- you could buy a prestigious house in those days for £10! Walt Disney was much more recent and born on the December the 5th 1901 and through his 100’s of films he raised £50 billion. That’s 50,00 luxury houses... So I think I have to give the point to Walt Disney on round 1.

Round two.

Where would you be without me?

Without the works of Walt Disney, the country, even the world wouldn’t have all the hundreds of Disney movies out today. We wouldn’t have all the theme parks and attractions that came from the works of Disney- so that also means no Disney land!

The animation out today would probably be very underdeveloped seeing as Disney revolutionised turning books and images into moving images. Can you imagine a world without some of the amazing movies that played such a vital role in your childhood? Toy story first came out in 1995, so they were around before most of us in this room were even born. I remember watching them when I was younger don’t you? At 12 years old when toy story 3 came out, my friends and I all thought we’d out grown toys who come to life. But I admit and I’m sure you will too that we were actually quite excited about the release third movie. As they say; your never too old for a Disney Pixar movie. I’m not really sure how Shakespeare’s going to convince me that we would be at a greater loss without him, but let’s see: The English language actually owes a lot to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, and so on. For example the word gossip! Who would’ve thought that Shakespeare gave that word to us?! I mean what would all our beloved trashy magazines say on them if they couldn’t use the word gossip! And to be fair to Shakespeare, some of Disney’s creations actually are due to the works of Shakespeare. Like the Lion King, did you know that that was actually based on the famous Shakespeare play “Hamlet”. And the Lion King 2 is based on “Romeo and Juliet.” This is a tough round to call. 1700 words or hundreds of movies? I think I will give the point to Shakespeare as without the many words he imparted to us, the Disney movies wouldn’t really make sense.

Final Round Or should I say FIRE ROUND.

William Shakespeare and Walt Disney have thirty seconds to impress me starting now.

Shakespeare’s still on the curriculum, Disney founded the best-known motion picture company in the whole world, Shakespeare was adventurous and ahead of his time, He investigated different religions, races and sexes.

But Disney won seven emmy awards, Created eleven theme parks, Made some of our most loved fictional characters, Was the master of animation, Made images come to life, And put a smile on millions of children’s faces, Walt Disney takes away the title. For he changed the world the most.