Shakespeare References in Slow Hand

Slow Hand: Women Writing Erotica, a collection of short stories edited by Michele Slung, contains a few Shakespeare references. The first comes in the introduction, and is a reference to The Tempest. Michele Slung writes, "Remembering all those times when unwashed hair, or a recalcitrant pimple, or an unwished-for five pounds seemed to stand between me and the enjoyment I might take from a kiss, and always sensing the unfairness of it, but accepting it, nonetheless, as the set of rules from which to operate, I appreciated at once the sea change these stories represented" (pages xvi-xvii). The phrase "sea change" comes from Ariel's song in the first act. He sings, "Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea change/Into something rich and strange." Then Barbara Gowdy's story "Ninety-Three Million Miles Away" contains a reference to Romeo And Juliet: "A consoling line from Romeo and Juliet played in her head: 'He that is stricken blind cannont forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost'" (p. 61). It is a line that Romeo says to Benvolio in the first act. Each story has a short author's note at its end, and the note to Sara Davidson's "The Wager" contains a reference to The Taming Of The Shrew: "The fantasy in this piece is that archetypal one best dramatized in The Taming of the Shrew - where a strong woman resists with everything in her arsenal and yet is overcome by the cunning of the male" (p. 98). Liz Clarke's "Reasons Not To Go To Fort Lauderdale" contains a Macbeth reference: "When the phone rang at 1:30 that morning I was in the kitchen, gathered with Gabe and Patricia around a bubbling vat of chickpeas like the three witches in Macbeth" (p. 122).

Slow Hand: Women Writing Erotica was published in 1992. The copy I read was a First Edition.