None So Blind
is a collection of Joe Haldeman's science fiction short stories and poems,
several of which have Shakespeare references.
The story “Passages” contains a reference to Hamlet: “It took a step forward and
rolled its shoulders like an exotic dancer, very
exotic, which I supposed was an Obelobelian shrug. ‘Not maybe, die maybe. It is…
self. You must be…self.’ Always good advice. Go forty light-years and find
Polonius” (p. 59). That, of course, refers to Polonius’ famous advice to
Laertes: “to thine own self be true.”
“Images” contains a reference to The Taming Of The Shrew: “I’d done leads in Shrew and Salesman and
had dozens of smaller parts” (p. 180).
“The Cure” has a reference to Macbeth: “Now people were shooting back, and it was like one of
those reenactments you get at Corral World or somewhere, sound and fury and
nobody getting really hurt” (p. 228). That line contains a reference to one of
the most famous speeches in the play, when Macbeth says, “It is a tale/Told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.”
“None So Blind” contains a Hamlet reference: “So along came Cletus, to whom Cupid had dealt
only slings and arrows, and what might otherwise have been merely an
opposites-attract sort of romance became an emotional and intellectual union
that, in the next century, would power a social tsunami that would irreversibly
transform the human condition” (p. 251). The phrase “slings and arrows” comes
from that most famous of all speeches, the “To be or not to be” speech.
The poem “The Homecoming” contains a reference to The Merchant Of Venice: “but a shylock
in Saigon would give you/five for six, in crisp hundred-dollar bills” (p. 264).
None So Blind
was published in 1996.
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