Abstract
V R\8/X\312dealing with the last years of the American Revolution in South Carolina, and a group of border romances, was steeped J& in Shakespeare and greatly indebted to him.' His works contain many Shakespearian quotations and allusions. The violence, melodrama, strong imagination, and powerful emotion that permeate his works suggest the same qualities that are often found in Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists. Although recent discussions of Shakespeare's influence on Simms have been concerned mainly with the novels about the American Revolution,2 Simms's indebtedness to Shakespeare in a group of six novels known as border romances of the South-Guy Rivers, Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Charlemont, Beauchampe, and Confession-is greater than in the Revolutionary fiction. An examination of these border novels will reveal clearly the general and the specific types of influence that Shakespeare exerted on Simms as well as some of Simms's most interesting criticism of Shakespeare and his works. In Guy Rivers is seen the influence of Macbeth and Hamlet. Guy Rivers, the villain-hero, is ambitious, fierce-tempered, brutal, murderous, and highly imaginative. Obviously like Macbeth in several ways, he is, on the other hand, never the admirable person that Macbeth was prior to his murder of Duncan. He attempts to blame fate, his mother, Walter Munro (an older outlaw), and other persons for his career of crime. Speaking to Munro, Rivers says:
Published Version
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