Killing For
Company: The Case Of Dennis Nilsen, a non-fiction crime book written by
Brian Masters, contains a couple of references to
Hamlet. The first comes in a passage written by the murderer Dennis
Nilsen himself (author Brian Masters had access to Nilsen’s writing): “It may be the
perverted overkill of my need to help people – victims who I decide to release
quickly from the slings and arrows of their outrageous fortune, pain and
suffering” (p. 215). In those lines, he refers, of course, to Hamlet’s most
famous soliloquy. The second reference comes in the book’s final chapter,
titled “Answers.” Masters writes: “Allied to the schizoid capacity to
misinterpret the feelings and thoughts of others is a desperate, obsessive need
that everyone should bend his energies to noticing and understanding the
miscreant himself. ‘Report me and my cause aright,’ said Hamlet; this might be
Nilsen’s
leitmotiv, expressing his
desire that at last some attention might be afforded him” (p. 257). The line
quoted is spoken to Horatio just before Hamlet dies.
Killing For Company:
The Case Of Dennis Nilsen was published in 1985. The edition I read was the
Coronet edition, fourteenth impression (from 1992).
No comments:
Post a Comment