Shakespeare Reference in The Ullman Code

Robert Bernhard’s novel The Ullman Code has one Shakespeare reference. Rather, it contains a phrase that Shakespeare used more than once. Bernard writes: “What can I tell you about me and Adina? I was an old man having fun with a young girl. That’s the long and the short of it” (p. 134). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom says, “For the short and the long is, our play is preferred.” Then in The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Nym says, “He loves your wife; there’s the short and the long.” In the very next scene, Mistress Quickly says, “Marry, this is the short and the long of it: you have brought her into such a canaries as ‘tis wonderful.” And in The Merchant Of Venice, Lancelot says, “Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew.” I am not certain, however, that the phrase originated with Shakespeare.

The Ullman Code was published in 1975. The copy I read was The Berkley Medallion Edition from June 1976.