Covert Appropriations of Shakespeare: Three Case Studies

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2007 by Hirsh, James

It is unlikely that Clemens intended readers to make a connection between Hack's moral crisis and that of Claudius. The recognition of a connection between Huck and a Machiavellian murderer might have confused readers and undermined the profound sympathy Clemens was trying to generate for his main character at this point in the novel. The connection is obscured by the radical change in context and language and by the overt Shakespearean allusions elsewhere in the novel, which serve as red herrings. If Clemens intended to obscure the appropriation, his strategy succeeded for 85 years despite the fact that during this period Huckleberry Finn was subjected to intense critical scrutiny. The earliest published reference to the connection between Huck and Claudius that I have been able to locate was made in 1971 by James L. Roberts, who merely mentioned in passing that Huck in this episode "is a takeoff on Hamlet's Claudius" (58). Clyde Wade in 1984 (1-4) and Anthony J. Berret in 1985 (204) mentioned a few of the similarities explained above. Concerned simply with establishing that Hamlet 3.3 was a source for Chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn, Wade and Berret each focused only on similarities between the two episodes and thus inadvertently created the misleading impression that the passage in Huckleberry Finn is a simple, straightforward imitation of Claudius's speech rather than a radical inversion.13

Shakespeare was an imposing presence in the life of Eugene O'Neill even before O'Neill became a dramatist himself. O'Neill's father, a prominent actor, was vain about his performances in Shakespearean roles and often quoted Shakespeare to his sons. As a boy O'Neill tried to impress his father by memorizing and recitingthe entire part of Macbeth, but his father complained that the recitation lacked appropriate emotion. O'Neill incorporated these details in his autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night. Although at times O'Neill seems to have gone out of his way to make his works as superficially unlike Shakespeare's as possible (which would, paradoxically, constitute a profound kind of influence), he often appropriated Shakespearean material, as amply documented by Normand Berlin. After a production of Strange Interludewas harshly condemned by reviewers, O'Neill wrote to George Jean Nathan, "One critic got real peeved because I had so obviously imitated Shakespeare-which is the finest compliment I have ever got" (Selected Letters 358). In a conversation reported by a tavern crony, O'Neill expressed skepticism about the possibility of literary originality: "Everything has been said before. There's nothing new to write about."14

In LongDay 's Journey into Night (completed in 1941, first produced and published, posthumously, in 1956), O'Neill's most admired work, he came to terms not only with the members of his family but with Shakespeare. Shakespeare is actually on stage more than any of the four Tyrones. The entire play is set in the living room of the summer house of the Tyrones, which is described in the opening stage direction. At the center of the rear wall of the set " is a small bookcase, with a picture of Shakespeare above if (11). The play contains numerous explicit allusions to Shakespeare, including verbatim quotations.