There is certainly an echo of Shakespeare in "Pale Fire". But we must also remember J.W.v.Goethe ( because of the "Wind/Kind and vent/enfant that enters the poem through the "Erlkönig" poem). 

I remembered Goethe's words from a small booklet of poems I enjoyed as a child:
 "Gott gibt die Nüsse, aber er knackt sie nicht auf.”  ( is there a hint at what C.Kunin extracted in the Kinbotean "a knackle of walnuts"?) 
 
A rough translation teaches that "God gives us nuts but he doesn't open them for us".
( And yet, as I remembered it, the sentence read not "knackt". In it God didn't bite open the nuts he gave us: "aber Er beisst sie nicht auf"). 
 
PS: When I checked any references for a more complete information I found something interesting using the Google/German, concerning Walnuts.
These nuts are called Juglans Regia L. (their botanical name) from a link between "Jovis glans" and "Jupitereichel" ( a sexual undertone, Yes?).
The Walnut could have been spread by the Romans, but in Greek they are named
"Karya", the name of a young girl loved by Dyonisus and who was transformed into a nut-tree. Small images were sculpted from its bark and named "Kariatids", although in the Accropolis they were sculpted from the stone.
 
Jansy
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 2:15 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Nuts in Hamlet

> There is dim echo of the nut theme in Hamlet:

> "O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
> act 2, sc. 2, ll. 248-9
> wd
>
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