Page 64
peculiar resonance. After all, if the plots and characters of Shakespeare’s plays can be so readily adapted into romance conventions, how different can the highest of high culture be from the much-scorned, nearly entirely female endeavors of romance? Equally significant, if Shakespeare’s texts can be used against each other and invoked to serve temporary female power, then perhaps the male-dominated systems that these historical novels record can be eroded and manipulated from within. Actually, the persistence of patriarchy, which many critics take to be the most pernicious fantasy that the romance offers, seems to me its most realistic component. Certainly romances acknowledge that we are all, male and female, still implicated in patriarchy; Shakespeare both marks that acknowledgment and becomes a means to rework the system.
Notes
1
|
Susan Baker, in “Comic Material: Shakespeare in the Classical Detective Story” (1994), argues that Shakespeare authorizes detective novelists trying to affirm the quality of their popular fiction.
|
2
|
The most blatant Shakespeare appearance in the romance novel is Erica Jong’s Serenissima (1986), now titled Shylock’s Daughter. The heroine, Jessica, travels through time and has an affair with Shakespeare.
|
3
|
For a brief survey of what I have found, see “Shakespearean Romances by Play”: http://www.colby.edu/personal/leosborn/popshak.htm, which lists references by play, often with links to pages that explain or cite the reference.
|
4
|
Porter’s Toast of the Town (1993) may be an exception, since the nobleman’s obsessive pursuit of the heroine echoes Orsino’s excessive passion for Olivia and revises that passion (since he finally does succeed in wooing the lady).
|
5
|
The Romance Readers List (RRA-L) (1998) and the Heyerlist (1998) are only two of several listserv reading groups that discuss historical details, author bibliographies, and other resources. I owe thanks to both groups for responding so generously to my quest for Shakespeare references.
|
|