Shakespeare References in Echoes

Maeve Binchy’s novel Echoes contains a few references to Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet. All three times, the character Gerry Doyle is referred to as Romeo. Binchy writes, “‘I can’t believe he’s still the Romeo,’ David complained” (p. 182). And then: “People sang the words softly to each other, oddly assorted people like David Power who sang them into Josie’s ear because he hadn’t got to Clare O’Brien before Romeo” (p. 200). And finally: “Well hadn’t Clare got David Power as her husband, and the town Romeo Gerry Doyle was saying only the other night in the hotel that he wished he had moved in before the young doctor” (p. 436). In addition to those references, Binchy’s line “Instead, her mind was full of snakes and worries slithering around” (p. 84) reminds me a bit of the line from Macbeth, “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.” And Blinchy’s line “No, there would be neither rhyme nor reason going somewhere like Rome and drinking milk” (p. 139) makes us think of the lines from The Comedy Of Errors, “Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,/When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?” Apparently, the phrase did not originate with Shakespeare, though he popularized it, using it again in As You Like It: “Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.”

Echoes was first published in 1985.