Shakespearean Elements in Irving's Sketch Book

Abstract

TUDENTS of American literature have long been aware of the frequent references to Shakespeare in Washington Irving's letters and journals.' Almost fifty years ago, Edwin A. Greenlaw commented on the Shakespearean elements in one of Irving's creative works, the History of New York,2 and more than twenty years ago, Stanley T. Williams remarked on the way Irving adorns every step of his actual walk through . . . [the Shakespeare country] with Shakespearean allusions.3 In Sketch Book, as in no other work by Irving, Shakespeare not only colored the style and manner but even helped to shape the spirit of Irving's imagination. Every reader of Sketch Book will recall that two of the items are full of conscious and deliberate manifestations of Irving's fondness for the Bard, namely, Stratford-on-Avon, to which Williams was referring, and The Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap. In the former, as he told of his rambles through the Shakespeare country, Irving quoted directly, and at some length, from Merry Wiv'es of Windsor, Henry IV Part II, As You Like It, and Cymbeline. He then summed up his experiences in the following comment, in which is a suggestion of far more than verbal adornment: