< previous page | page_50 | next page > |
Page 50 ters obviously know the context for Venetia’s earlier comment. Although the reader may not get the joke or the subtle suggestion that Damerel, like Cassio, has lost his reputation for an indiscretion provoked by another, this Shakespearean bantering shows that the characters understand one another. As the Regency genre evolves, using Shakespeare as a shared language often signals the intellectual compatibility between hero and heroine. If Heyer’s Shakespearean allusions nestle unobtrusively in her novels, later romance novelists do not hide their Shakespeare. Least interesting are Shakespearean titles, dedications, or chapter headings, since these references often present lines from the plays in isolation. For example, Patricia Veryan’s novels often sport Shakespearean titles—Love Alters Not (1987), Men Were Deceivers Ever (1989), A Shadow’s Bliss (1994) —but the references do not extend far beyond the title. Surprisingly, many romance novelists allude to the plays or characters in this partial way. For example, Joan Wolf uses Shakespearean quotations among her chapter headings in several novels (The Counterfeit Marriage [1980], A London Season [1981], His Lordship’s Mistress [1982]). For Fool’s Masquerade (1984), in which Valentine Ardsley, orphaned and escaping the unpleasant plans of her guardians, disguises herself as a groom for Diccon, Earl of Leyburn, Wolf gives only two quotations from Twelfth Night, one at the start of each part. The first half of the novel opens with: “My father had a daughter loved a man/As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, /I should your lordship” (Wolf 1984:5; 2.4.106–8). The allusion not only reveals the narrator’s crossdressing to readers who know that Viola disguises herself as a page in Twelfth Night, but also anticipates that Valentine, like Viola, will fall in love with her master. The second headnote foreshadows Diccon’s belated discovery that he loves her: Your master quits you; and for your service done him, So much against the mettle of your sex, So far beneath your soft and tender breeding, And since you called me master for so long, Here is my hand: you shall from this time be Your master’s mistress. (125; 5.1.310–14) Although all chapter headings in Wolf’s earlier novels apply to their content, the Twelfth Night references in Fool’s Masquerade have more extended influence, since the plot both works through the |
||
< previous page | page_50 | next page > |