Shakespearean References in Turtledove's Work

William Shakespeare has been used by Turtledove many times in many ways.

Ruled Britannia
Shakespeare is one of the main characters of Ruled Britannia. The book includes extensive quotations from his actual works and from the two plays which he never wrote in our history but did write in the timeline where England was occupied by Spain - a play about King Philip II of Spain written to please the occupiers, and a play about the Briton Queen Boudicca, written to arouse a rebellion against them. Turtledove borrows several single lines from Henry VIII, Titus Andonicus, The Merchant of Venice, and King John and adapts them to fit into one or the other fictional plays.

At different points throughout the novel, Shakespeare works on a play titled Love's Labours Won. This is the title of one of his storied "lost plays;" it is believed to have been meant as a sequel to Love's Labours Lost. The play which Shakespeare works on may be this lost sequel, or it may be Love's Labours Lost under a different title (like The Maltese Elephant, The Phantom of the Catacombs, or, in Ruled Britannia itself, Prince of Denmark.

Existing plays referred to specifically include Richard III, Hamlet (under the title "Prince of Denmark"), and Romeo and Juliet. Turtledove writes a scene in which Prince of Denmark is performed live in its entirety, with Shakespeare's fellow King's Men Richard Burbage as Hamlet and Will Kemp as the Gravedigger. Shakespeare himself plays Hamlet's deceased father.

The fictional Constable Walter Strawberry is based on Dogberry from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

We Haven't Got There Yet
Shakespeare is also the viewpoint character in the short story "We Haven't Got There Yet," which revolves around him discovering that another playwright has plagiarized his work. Shakespeare attends a live performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, at first intending to confront Stoppard and demand he stop stealing Shakespeare's scenes and characters, then intending to compliment Stoppard on the play's cleverness, and finally learning that Stoppard is long dead from the theater company's perspective and that the actors themselves come from the impossibly distant future. While watching the performance, Shakespeare also reflects on how the conventions of Elizabethan-Jacobean theater are not observed by the play.

The story uses several Shakespearean quotes, though very few are simply slipped into characters' dialogue as so many had been in Ruled Britannia. The most heavily quoted play is Hamlet, mostly lines which also appear in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and are excerpted from the latter. At the end of the play a twenty-first century actress quotes a good-sized chunk of The Tempest for Shakespeare's benefit. The Tempest is believed to have been written in 1610 and 1611; the story is set in 1607, so Shakespeare is hearing lines which he himself had not yet written but would later, or would have, written. The implcations of this alarm him to the point that he flees the twenty-first century actors' company. It is not clear how if at all his as-yet unwritten projects will be affected by this encounter.

Other Works
Shakespeare is not a character in the following works, but homage is still paid to him.

Atlantis
In Opening Atlantis, Victor Radcliff reflects that Blaise Black's definition of honor and courage under fire closely match those of Falstaff. He declines to explain this to Blaise as changes to the English language in the two lifetimes since Shakespeare had written would render the archaic speech incomprehensible to one who was not yet fluent in English. This gets Radcliff curious about the rates of change in other languages.

In The United States of Atlantis, Victor Radcliff reflects that the line "Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness" (Hamlet Act V) was equally applicable to enduring the horrors of war as it was to gravedigging.

A very short while later, Radcliff once again invokes the graveyard scene of Hamlet by addressing the skull of a honker which William Radcliff had acquired a century earlier with "Alas, poor Yorick . . . " Blaise Black intrudes upon him at ths point and regards the scene with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump
David Fisher reflects on the relative advantages of magical technologies which use living and nonliving components. The former tend to be more resistant to curses because they have, on some level, no matter how slight, a force of will with which to resist "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." The "slings and arrows . . . " phrase comes from Act III of Hamlet.

In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Despite completely dominating Britain in the early twenty-first century, Germany has developed a deep reverence for Shakespeare by 2009. In fact, the study of Shakespeare is more dynamic in Germany than in the Anglosphere. This is in part because a 19th century German translation made Shakespeare less archaic and more accessible in language and in much larger part because Germans enjoy a much higher standard of living than do the citizens of any Anglophone ountry, and correspondingly have more time and resources to devote to scholarship of all stripes.

The Man With the Iron Heart
In The Man With the Iron Heart, Diana McGraw's conscience troubles her after her affair with Marvin Lewis. When her dense husband asks her what's wrong, she assures him all is well and she loves him, then thinks to herself "Methinks the lady doth protest too much." (Hamlet Act III)

Southern Victory
In How Few Remain, Abraham Lincoln reads Shakespeare without paying much attention to it during a mostly solitary train ride across the Upper Midwest during which he is preoccupied with his own melancholy thoughts.

In Breakthroughs, during a major US victory on the Roanoke Front, US barrels carry with them large bundles of lumber to fill in wide ditches that Confederate military engineers had dug in an attempt to immobilize them. Captain Cremony, Chester Martin's CO, is reminded of Macbeth, and exclaims "Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane!"

Also in Breakthroughs, Charley Sprague quotes the third act of Hamlet: "Aye, there's the rub." On recognizing the quote, Percy Stone comments that, between it and an earlier Biblical quote, Sprague is bringing a touch of class to Jonathan Moss's squadron. Encouraged, Sprague quotes Shakespeare again, this time Act III of Henry V:


 * "But when the blast of war blows in our ears
 * Then imitate the action of the tiger."

This time Stone responds that he is not limber enough to lick his own balls.

In Drive to the East, Scipio, realizing that his son is beginning to plan to take up arms against the Freedom Party, is reminded of a very appropriate quote from the first Act of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar:


 * "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
 * He thinks too much: Such men are dangerous."

In The Grapple, the same line is paraphrased by a Naval Review Board officer about Sam Carsten. The line is paraphrased as:


 * "Yon Carsten has a lean and mustang look.
 * He thinks too much: Such men are dangerous."

Following this paraphrase, Carsten reminisces about his school days. Though he dropped out of school before completing high school, he did remember Shakespeare almost thirty-five years after having read it, thanks to the effectiveness of his English teacher, Miss Brewster, as an educator.

Again in Drive to the East, Granville McDougald cynically passes judgment on the state of humanity by quoting Act V of The Tempest:


 * O brave new world, to have such people in't!

In The Grapple, Ophelia Clemens quotes John Milton to Abner Dowling, and Dowling mistakenly believes the quote is Shakespearean.

In In at the Death, Dowling has the opportunity to prove that he's not entirely ignorant of Shakespeare by reflecting that the short, slim, and dour Falstaff Jeffries does not live up to his name--that is, he does not match the magnificent clown from the two parts of Henry IV. Falstaff was larger than life both in terms of physical size and force of personality.

On a much earthier note, in The Center Cannot Hold, Jonathan Moss consoles himself for having accidentally impregnated Laura Secord by reminding himself that Shakespeare had impregnated his wife before their wedding.

Worldwar
In Upsetting the Balance, Jens Larssen, upon reaching the top of a hill overlooking the prairie of Washington State, is reminded of the line


 * "Oh God! I could be bounded in a nutshell
 * And count myself a king of infinite space!"

He knows the line is Shakespearean, though he cannot remember whether it comes from Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear. (It comes from the second act of Hamlet.)

In Striking the Balance, the cessation of hostilities allows electricity to return to Britain. David Goldfarb reflects that he rather misses the atmosphere which torchlighting had leant the White Horse Inn, saying that it had been possible to imagine Shakespeare visiting the place.

In Homeward Bound, Sam Yeager reflects on how much American English has changed in the sixty-odd years between his going into cold sleep and his encountering the crew of the Commodore Perry. He reflets that the English language has always been a dynamic language and that Shakespeare would find Hemingway incomprehensible,

Literary Note
This idea of Shakespeare struggling to understand later generations' versions of the language is seen firsthand in "We Haven't Got There Yet."