Shakespeare References in Goodbye

I am still struck by how many times I encounter Shakespeare references in my reading. W.H. Manville’s novel Goodbye contains a few references. The first one really surprised me, for it’s a line that I often quote from Antony And Cleopatra, but one I don’t often hear anyone else use. Manville writes: “Where are you? I’m dying, Egypt, dying, man” (p. 40). Antony says to Cleopatra, “I’m dying, Egypt, dying.” (I say it when I feel weak from the Los Angeles heat.) The second is a play on a line from The Merchant Of Venice. Manville writes, “‘All that glitters ain’t necessarily shit,’ he said, and they laughed” (p. 131). In the play, Morocco reads the scroll contained in the gold casket: “All that glisters is not gold.” There is also a reference to Henry The Fifth. Manville writes: “The homoerotic is team spirit. It wins football games. The company of men, this band of brothers, ‘the guys’” (p. 151). The “band of brothers” phrase is taken from Henry V’s famous St. Crispin’s Day speech.

The book also contains two references to Hamlet. The first is a loose reference to a phrase from the famous “To be or not to be” speech. Manville writes, “all the fears that a woman is heir to” (p. 158), bringing to mind “The thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to.” The other is a reference to the play itself: “The first time I had seen Hamlet had been in Chicago. I was twelve and had gone with my father. He had tried to explain that the ghost of Hamlet’s father was not meant to be taken as real, that it was a manifestation of Hamlet’s guilty conscience, but I had believed in that ghost at twelve; perhaps I believed in it still” (p. 280). That’s a little odd, because of course the ghost is meant to be taken as real. After all, it is seen by a few other people before Hamlet himself even sees it.

Goodbye was published in 1977 by Simon And Schuster.