Shakespeare References in Chronicles Volume One

Bob Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles Volume One contains a few Shakespeare references. The first is a mention of Romeo And Juliet: “He wore a tomato-stained apron, had a fleshy, hard-bitten face, bulging cheeks, scars on his face like the marks of claws – thought of himself as a lady’s man – saving his money so he could go to Verona in Italy and visit the tomb of Romeo and Juliet” (p. 13). The next reference is sort of to Shakespeare and Macbeth. Dylan is writing about reading articles from the 1800s on microfilm. In his description of the various things he was reading about, Dylan writes: “There’s a riot in New York where two hundred people are killed outside of the Metropolitan Opera House because an English actor had taken the place of an American one” (p. 85). I assume he is referring to the so-called Shakespeare riot, which took place in 1849 outside the Astor Opera House. Thirty people were killed, not two hundred, but at least another one hundred fifty people were injured. This happened at a performance of Macbeth by the English actor William Charles Macready. The American actor Edwin Forrest was performing the same play nearby. The next reference is to one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters. Dylan writes: “Like Falstaff, I’d been heading from one play into the next, but now fate itself had played a nightmarish trick. I wasn’t Falstaff anymore” (p. 156). John Falstaff is in The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth, The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth, and The Merry Wives Of Windsor, and is talked about in Henry The Fifth. The book’s final reference is to Shakespeare himself. Dylan writes, “He dressed in black from head to foot and would quote Shakespeare” (p. 261). He is talking about Paul Clayton there.

Chronicles Volume One was published in 2004. It was first published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK in 2004. The copy I read was published by Pocket Books in 2005. An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK.