The Heir Apparent
As with the previous books in the series, each chapter begins with a quoted passage. Chapter Three begins with this: “To me, fair friend, you never can be old,/For as you were when first your eye I eyed,/Such seems your beauty still” (p. 34). These are lines from Sonnet 104. The sonnet is not identified in the book, but its author is. The fifteenth chapter likewise begins with a line from Shakespeare: “Come not between the dragon and his wrath” (p. 140). That is a line spoken by King Lear to Kent in the first scene of the play. The twenty-fourth chapter also begins with some lines from Shakespeare: “I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,/Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows/Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,/With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:/There sleeps Titania some time of the night,/Lulled in these flowers with dances and light,/And there the snake throws her enameled skin,/Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in” (p. 195). As with the other quoted lines, the play is not identified, only the author. These lines come from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon speaking them to Puck. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is referred to a few more times, because there are faeries in the fantasy realm. Karl Cullinane meets a faerie, and asks her name. She responds, “Titania might be best, all things considered” (p. 199). Karl asks, “Queen of the faeries?” (p. 199). The name is used again on the next page. Rosenberg writes: “‘I’m sorry, Karl Cullinane,’ Titania said. ‘I don’t mean to tease you” (p. 200). And then: “‘No,’ she said, in Titania’s voice” (p. 201). And: “‘It wasn’t mockery. Maybe this would be best,’ Titania said, the voice now issuing from a dark patch in a mass of mist” (p. 201). And: “‘Ahrmin,’ Titania said, ‘is there’” (p. 201). There is another reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream a little later. Rosenberg writes: “On a night skulk, he was supposed to be unequaled, much less unsurpassed. He shook his head. Oh, what fools these mortals be, he thought, including me. He could almost have laughed; Walter was always his own best audience” (p. 234). In Act III Scene ii, Puck says, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” The final Shakespeare reference in the novel is also to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and is another mention of Titania: “‘I let myself care about him, Titania. About all of them” (p. 259).
The Warrior Lives
There is only one Shakespeare reference in The Warrior Lives, and it is to The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth. Rosenberg writes, “He thought about splinters, and about pulling on his climbing gloves, but decided that good touch was the better part of valor here” (pages 443-444). That’s a reference to Falstaff’s famous line, “The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.”
The Heir Apparent was published in 1987. The Warrior Lives was published in 1988. The collection I read was published in 2004.
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