Abstract
AbstractThis essay argues that Shakespearean allusion is a recurrent and important factor in the detective novels of Georgette Heyer. Though the master text for Heyer is Hamlet, a variety of Shakespeare plays are referred to, and mention of them functions in multiple ways. Quotations from Shakespeare reveal truths about the characters and comment on their situations and personalities. They also afford points of entry for people previously unacquainted to talk to each other, and finally they have effects in terms of genre, since their presence can, with equal facility, tend towards comic relief (in line with a tradition in golden-age crime fiction of using Macbeth in particular to comic effect) or work to add gravitas and resonance. The use of Shakespearean allusion is thus central to Heyer’s technique. This article is published as part of a collection to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.
Highlights
This essay argues that Shakespearean allusion is a recurrent and important factor in the detective novels of Georgette Heyer
In Georgette Heyer’s A Blunt Instrument, the biblically minded police constable Glass says “Bread of deceit is sweet to a man
Afterwards ... his mouth shall be filled with gravel”, and the detective novelist Sally, who is the nearest the novel has to a heroine, asks “Is that out of the Bible?
Summary
Allusion to Shakespeare is fundamental to that technique because it allows her to suggest things about mood, character and situation without having to confirm whether or not these things are true, which would give too much away to the reader.
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