Shakespeare References in Pentimento

Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento contains two references to Shakespeare. The first is in “Julia,” with Hellman writing, “Once or twice we went up to the theatre in London, but she would sigh halfway through and say she had no feeling for the theatre, only Shakespeare on the page, and sometimes not even then” (p. 97). The second is in a chapter titled “Theatre.” Hellman writes, “Together they would sit on the stage until the second curtain call and go through a scene from Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, or a series of poems, anything that Digges had chosen to teach Monty” (p. 162). Pentimento was published in 1973.