Andronnikov and Niagarin, two Soviet experts in quest of a
buried treasure (Zemblan crown jewels), have been compared to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern.
HAMLET Denmark's a
prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world
one.
HAMLET A goodly one, in which there
are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o'
the worst.
ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my
lord.
HAMLET Why, then, 'tis none to you;
for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To
me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Why then, your
ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET O God, I could be
bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it
not that I
have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed
are ambition, for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.
HAMLET A dream itself is but a
shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold
ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
HAMLET Then are our beggars
bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows.
(Hamlet, 2.2)
Shade "was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false
azure in the windowpane." Is Botkin, alias Kinbote, alias Charles the
Beloved, last King of Zembla, Shade's shadow? Is Kinbote (Shade's
neighbor) a waxwing? In Hamlet (5.2) Osric is a lapwing running
away with the shell on his head.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple
sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king.
The first of these lines (from Pope's Essay on Man)
is quoted by Shade in his poem (Pale Fire, Line 419). In a variant
(see Kinbote's Commentary for Lines 417-421) Shade quotes both
lines.
Kinbote's Zembla seems to be a peninsula, but Novaya Zemlya
(Pope's "Nova Zembla") is an archipelago. Treasure Island is a
novel by R. L. Stevenson (the author of The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the
loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing
desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter
from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places—— Our man,
who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never——was bidden not to
display so much modesty. (from Kinbote's Commentary for Line
741)
Queen Disa, "Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone" (Index
to PF), brings to mind Desdemona, Othello's wife in Shakespeare's
tragedy.
Alexey Sklyarenko