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Page 52 However, Shakespearean references are too pervasive to serve only self-legitimating purposes. These novels often rework Shakespearean language and plots in the service of romance. As in Heyer’s work, references fall into several categories beyond epigrams and titles: Shakespeare-quoting characters, incidental Shakespeare, Shakespeare as historical context (especially in the actress-novels), and full-scale reworking of Shakespeare-as-solution or plot resolution. “Uncle Will” even occasionally surfaces as a character, although those novels engage Shakespeare’s biography rather than his work.2 Even when these patterns overlap, the individual novels position Shakespeare differently. For example, several romance novelists incorporate characters who compulsively quote Shakespeare. These range from the random quoter like Victoria in Julie Garwood’s Prince Charming (1994) to Lucinda Benedict, who quotes Shakespeare through three novels by Kasey Michaels, to the Shakespeare-obsessed father in Susan Carroll’s The Lady Who Hated Shakespeare (1986). In these novels, reciting Shakespeare demonstrates the character’s self-protectiveness: both Garwood’s Victoria and Carroll’s Walter Renwick quote the Bard to distance themselves from their emotional problems. Lucinda Benedict of Kasey Michaels’ alliterative trio of novels (The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane [1982], The Playful Lady Penelope [1988], and The Haunted Miss Hampshire [1992]) differs from Victoria and Renwick both because she quotes other literary figures and because she speaks entirely in quotations—her every utterance appropriates the Bard or another male literary authority. Shakespeare’s language both isolates these characters and enables them to speak. These quotations set Shakespeare’s language in an unusual relationship to the understood values of romance: Women enjoy telling. We value the exploration of emotion in verbal terms. We are not as interested in action as we are in depth of emotion. And we like emotion to be clear and authoritative, not vague or overly subtle the way it often seems to be in male discourse. (Barlow and Krentz 1992:35) Barlow and Krentz argue that verbal acknowledgment of emotion is crucial; compelling the blocked male figure to articulate his emotions signals the romance heroine’s success. Thus, verbal skill and intellectual clarity about emotions can indicate a character’s sig- |
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