| While it's nearly impossible to find a literary work | | | | seminal American novel - tips its hat to its |
| that doesn't reference another literary work, it | | | | European predecessors while simultaneously |
| isn't always easy to tell why such references are | | | | announcing its departure from literary tradition. |
| included. Sometimes they foreshadow important | | | | Not to mention, including a theater production |
| plot points, sometimes they help characterize a | | | | within the novel is a big acknowledgment to |
| person in the narrative, and sometimes, we're | | | | Shakespeare's whole play-within-a-play thing. |
| convinced, they're just included to make the | | | | In fact, the play within Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is |
| author sound smart. The really good ones, | | | | particularly important because it confirms what |
| however, work on multiple levels - the most | | | | Hamlet already suspects: that King Claudius is |
| important of which being to further the story's | | | | guilty of his Hamlet's father's murder. Similarly, |
| overarching message. Oh yeah, and to make us | | | | even though the reader already knows that the |
| laugh. Observe. | | | | King and Duke are frauds, the shamelessness of |
| Two of the most memorable allusions in literature | | | | their theater scam alerts us to the fact that |
| have got to be the Shakespeare shout-outs in | | | | things are only going to get worse. |
| Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. | | | | When push comes to shove, however, Twain's |
| After taking up with two swindlers who claim to | | | | Shakespearean allusions have a much more |
| be a king and a duke, Huck and the escaped | | | | important function in promoting the theme of |
| slave, Jim, help put on a production of select | | | | high-meets-low art; after all, it's not often that a |
| scenes from "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" as a | | | | country's most important work of literature is told |
| money-making scheme in rural Missouri. As you | | | | from the perspective of an ignorant teenager |
| can imagine, the result ain't pretty. | | | | talking in rural slang. What's really cool about this is |
| In Romeo and Juliet, the old, bearded Duke dons | | | | that it abandons the notion that high art should |
| a stolen nightgown and is wooed by the King in | | | | only be accessible to the upper echelons of |
| the play's immortal balcony scene; in Hamlet, the | | | | society. Some artwork is only on display in |
| Duke performs a magnificently botched version | | | | museums and palaces; some literature is only |
| of Hamlet's soliloquy that includes the phrases, "To | | | | intelligible to the multi-lingual with a background in |
| be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin" and "But | | | | the classics; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is |
| soft you, the fair Ophelia: ope not thy ponderous | | | | accessible to anyone who wants a good laugh and |
| and marble jaws." As an uneducated thirteen-year | | | | an outsider's perspective on society. |
| old, Huck doesn't appreciate the hilarity of the | | | | Twain's juxtaposition of high and low art remind |
| situation, but unlike the Duke and King, he at least | | | | us that literature in its purest form is meant to be |
| has the excuse of inexperience. | | | | democratic. And what screams "seminal American |
| Although these scenes are typical of Twain in that | | | | novel" more loudly than a democratizing |
| they're hugely entertaining, they also work on | | | | adventure story about moving past |
| several deeper levels. For one thing, it's only fitting | | | | institutionalized racism? |
| that Huckleberry Finn - often considered the | | | | |