Shakespeare References in Death In Venice And Seven Other Stories

Thomas Mann's Death In Venice And Seven Other Stories contains several Shakespeare references. Most of them occur in the story "Tonio Kröger," and all of the references within that story are to Hamlet. Mann writes: "That is Horatio's answer, dear Lisabeta. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so'" (p. 101). There the character is quoting one of Horatio's lines from Act V scene i. Next Mann writes: "Such was the case of Hamlet the Dane, that typical literary man. He knew what it meant to be called to knowledge without being born to it. To see things clear, if even through your tears, to recognize, notice, observe - and have to put it all down with a smile, at the very moment when hands are clinging, and lips meeting, and the human gaze is blinded with feeling - it is infamous, Lisabeta, it is indecent, outrageous" (p. 102). Mann then writes, "but don't you find, Lisabeta, that I have quite a Hamlet-like flow of oratory today" (p. 106). And then: "I want to stand on the terrace at Kronberg, where the ghost appeared to Hamlet, bringing despair and death to that poor, noble-souled youth" (p. 107). Two other stories contain references to Shakespeare. In "A Man And His Dog," Mann writes, "The name of the street where I was walking was Shakespeare Street" (p. 252). And in Felix Krull, Mann writes, "But when they were over and I resumed my dull and ordinary dress, how stale, flat and unprofitable seemed all the world by contrast, in what deep dejection did I spend the rest of the evening" (p. 376). Yes, another Hamlet reference. In Hamlet's first soliloquy, he says, "How stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world."

Death In Venice And Seven Other Stories was published in 1930, 1931 and 1936. The edition I read was published, I believe, in 1963.