Shakespeare References in Good As Gold

Joseph Heller’s novel Good As Gold contains a few Shakespeare references. The first is to a line from The Second Part Of King Henry The Sixth. Heller has Gold’s father say: “Cancer. It ate her up. See that taxi driver, the funny one? Toyt. Like a doornail. A stroke” (p. 42). Though there is some evidence that Shakespeare did not invent the phrase “dead as a doornail,” it is from his work that most people learned it. In Act IV, Cade says, “Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.” Shakespeare used the phrase again in The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth. Falstaff asks, “What, is the old king dead?” And Pistol replies, “As nail in door.”

Later in the book, one of Gold’s students tells him that he is disappointed in the class Gold is teaching. The class is titled “Monarchy and Monotheism in Literature from the Medieval to the Modern,” and the student says, “But it seems to be a course in Shakespeare’s history plays” (p. 136). Heller then writes: “‘We’ll be moving on to the major tragedies soon,’ Gold answered breezily. ‘All but Othello and the Roman plays. In Othello, unfortunately, there is no monarch, and the Romans were not monotheistic” (p. 136). Heller has Gold explain the misleading course title: “We feel that anyone interested in literature ought to study Shakespeare and we know that few students will do so unless we call it something else” (p. 136). Then Gold tells him to major in Urban Studies. “But do it soon. Otherwise you might find me there in a year or two and have to read Shakespeare’s history plays all over again” (0. 137).

Good As Gold was published in 1979.