The first two books in The Vampire Chronicles – Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat – contain Shakespeare references. I thought I had copies of the third and fourth books, but couldn’t locate them, and so moved onto the fifth book, Memnoch The Devil. This book isn’t nearly as good as the others, and gets fairly tedious, but there are a couple of Shakespeare references. The first reference is to Othello. Rice writes, “‘I don’t look so much for simple, evil people, murderers, you know, so much as a more sophisticated kind of criminal, someone with the mentality of an Iago’” (p.12). Iago, of course, is the character that misleads Othello, making him think his wife has been unfaithful. The book’s other reference is to The Merchant Of Venice, with Rice writing: “‘Of course I believe in the sanctity of it. It’s all I believe in! That’s my point, don’t you see? It’s all you believe in too…what glitters and what is gold’” (p. 87). That refers to the moment when the Prince of Morocco opens the golden casket only to read, “All that glisters is not gold.”
Memnoch The Devil was published in 1995. The copy I read was a First Edition.
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