I remember the footnotes in one Shakespeare play I read at school saying something like "[2] this is a humourous reference to Christopher Marlowe's contemporane

I remember the footnotes in one Shakespeare play I read at school saying something like "[2] this is a humourous reference to Christopher Marlowe's contemporaneous play..." which I sort of rolled my eyes at and remarked how that was a bit of a stretch and was anyone really supposed to notice that. My teacher drew the analogy to Scary Movie (which was relatively new at the time) and how we could all enjoy it just fine without footnotes explaining "this is a humourous reference to contemporaneous horror film Scream..." etc. It suddenly struck me the difference between studying culture historically and actually experiencing it "live". This analogy has only gotten better with time because I probably would need footnotes to get half the jokes in Scary Movie nowadays.