The characters in VN's novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) include Mr. Goodman, Sebastian Knight’s former secretary who wrote The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight soon after Sebastian Knight’s death. According to Sebastian’s half-brother V. (the narrator and main character in TRLSK), in his book Mr. Goodman tells several stories that he heard from Sebastian (who was pulling the leg of his future biographer):
Third story: Sebastian speaking of his very first novel (unpublished and destroyed) explained that it was about a fat young student who travels home to find his mother married to his uncle; this uncle, an ear-specialist, had murdered the student's father. Mr Goodman misses the joke. (chapter 7)
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Claudius murdered his bother (Hamlet’s father) pouring a potion into his ear. In Shakespeare’s play the Second Clown (who digs a grave for the newly deceased Ophelia) calls the First Clown “goodman delver:”
First Clown
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
It must be 'se offendendo;' it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,--
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. (5.1)
In the same scene Hamlet asks the First Clown how long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot:
How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?
I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year. (ibid.)
In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Vadim Vadimovich speaks of his daughter Bel and says “may Hamlet Godman rot in peace:”
There is a hollow of dimness again in the sequence, but it must have been soon after that, in the same motor court, or in the next, on the way home, that she slipped into my room at dawn, and sat down on my bed―move your legs―in her pyjama top to read me another poem:
In the dark basement, I stroked
the silky head of a wolf.
When the light returned
and all cried: "Ah!,"
it turned out to be only
Médor, a dead dog.
I again praised her talent, and kissed her more warmly, perhaps, than the poem deserved; for, actually, I found it rather obscure, but did not say so, and presently she yawned and fell asleep on my bed, a practice I usually did not tolerate. Today, however, on rereading those strange lines, I see through their starry crystal the tremendous commentary I could write about them, with galaxies of reference marks and footnotes like the reflections of brightly lit bridges spanning black water. But my daughter's soul is hers, and my soul is mine, and may Hamlet Godman rot in peace. (4.3)
Hamlet Godman is a charlatan critic in See under Real (1939), Vadim’s novel that corresponds to VN’s TRLSK. The uninformed, coarse-minded, malevolent Hamlet Godman is an Oxonian Dane:
An English novelist, a brilliant and unique performer, was supposed to have recently died. The story of his life was being knocked together by the uninformed, coarse-minded, malevolent Hamlet Godman, an Oxonian Dane, who found in this grotesque task a Kovalevskian "outlet" for the literary flops that his proper mediocrity fully deserved. The biography was being edited, rather unfortunately for its reckless concocter, by the indignant brother of the dead novelist. (2.10)
In the same scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, as he speaks to Laertes, calls himself “Hamlet the Dane:”
[Advancing] What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane.
Leaps into the grave (5.1)
Bel's mother, Annette Blagovo (Vadim’s second wife) is a namesake of Anyuta Blagovo, a character in Chekhov's story Moya zhizn’ (My Life, 1896). In a letter of January 26, 1891, to A. F. Koni Chekhov says that in Sakhalin he was at a funeral and compares himself to Hamlet:
Помнится, был я на Сахалине на похоронах. Хоронили жену поселенца, уехавшего в Николаевск. Около вырытой могилы стояли четыре каторжных носильщика ― ex officio, я и казначей в качестве Гамлета и Горацио, бродивших по кладбищу, черкес ― жилец покойницы ― от нечего делать, и баба каторжная; эта была тут из жалости: привела двух детей покойницы ― одного грудного и другого Алёшку, мальчика лет 4 в бабьей кофте и в синих штанах с яркими латками на коленях. Холодно, сыро, в могиле вода, каторжные смеются... Видно море. Алешка с любопытством смотрит в могилу; хочет вытереть озябший нос, но мешают длинные рукава кофты. Когда закапывают могилу, я его спрашиваю:
― Алёшка, где мать?
Он машет рукой, как проигравшийся помещик, смеётся и говорит:
― Закопали!
I remember I was at a funeral in Sakhalin. Beside the newly dug grave stood four convict bearers ex officio; the treasury clerk and I, in the capacity of Hamlet and Horatio, wandering about the cemetery; the dead woman’s lodger, a Circassian, who had come because he had nothing better to do; and a convict woman who had come out of pity and had brought the dead woman’s two children, one a baby, and the other, Alyoshka, a boy of four, wearing a woman’s jacket and blue breeches with bright-colored patches on the knees. It was cold and damp, there was water in the grave, the convicts were laughing. The sea was in sight. Alyoshka looked into the grave with curiosity; he tried to wipe his chilly nose, but the long sleeve of his jacket got into his way. When they began to fill in the grave I asked him: “Alyoshka, where is your mother?” He waved his hand with the air of a gentleman who has lost at cards, laughed, and said: “They have buried her!”
On his way back from Sakhalin (formerly, a site of penal colony that Chekhov compared to hell) Chekhov visited Ceylon (the island that Chekhov compared to paradise). At the end of LATH Vadim mentions Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands:
“That's all very well," I said, as I groped for the levers of my wheelchair, and you helped me to roll back to my room. "And I'm grateful, I'm touched, I'm cured! Your explanation, however, is merely an exquisite quibble—and you know it; but never mind, the notion of trying to twirl time is a trouvaille; it resembles (kissing the hand resting on my sleeve) the neat formula a physicist finds to keep people happy until (yawning, crawling back into bed) until the next chap snatches the chalk. I had been promised some rum with my tea--Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands (mumbling comfortably, dropping off, mumble dying away)--" (7.4)
At the end of his poem Dorozhnye zhaloby (“The Road Complaints,” 1830) Pushkin mentions nevesta (the bride), a wine-glass of rum and tea:
То ли дело быть на месте,
По Мясницкой разъезжать,
О деревне, о невесте
На досуге помышлять!
То ли дело рюмка рома,
Ночью сон, поутру чай;
То ли дело, братцы, дома!..
Ну, пошёл же, погоняй!..
Nevesta (“The Betrothed,” 1903) is Chekhov’s last story. Its heroine leaves home and never marries her fiancé Andrey Andreich. It seems that Vadim dies soon after completing LATH and never marries You (Vadim’s last love). Vadim's three wives (Iris Black, Annette Blagovo and Louise Adamson) seem to be his half-sisters. Vadim and his wives are the children of Count Starov, a retired diplomat. The characters in TRLSK include Doctor Starov (an old friend of V.'s family). His name brings to mind Dr. Startsev, the main character in Chekhov's story Ionych (1898). A Kovalevskian "outlet" found by Hamlet Godman in the grotesque task of knocking together the story of the writer's life brings to mind Maxim Kovalevski, a friend of Chekhov with whom Sofia Kovalevski (the famous mathematician in no way related to Professor Maxim Kovalevski) was in love.
According to V., the title of Goodman's book should have been The Farce of Mr. Goodman:
Mr. Goodman has never been a regular literary agent. He has only bet on books. He does not rightfully belong to that intelligent, honest and hard-working profession. We will leave it at that; but I have not yet done with The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight or rather – The Farce of Mr. Goodman. (chapter 7)
In a letter of Sept. 15, 1903, to Maria Alekseev-Lilin (Stanislavski’s wife) Chekhov says that his new play (“The Cherry Orchard,” 1904) is not a drama, but a comedy that sometimes even looks like a farce:
Вышла у меня не драма, а комедия, местами даже фарс, и я боюсь, как бы мне не досталось от Владимира Ивановича.