-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Just Our Bill
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 07:18:17 -0700
From: Mike Marcus <mmkcm@COMCAST.NET>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
CC: Mike Marcus <mmkcm@COMCAST.NET>
Mike M writes:
In Ada, the report of Percy de Prey's death includes this:
"while Broken-Arm Bill prayed his Roman deity in a frenzy of fear
for the Tartar to finish his job and go".
I mentioned last year that this was a transparent allusion to the
Shakespeare First Folio engraving of Shakespeare which sports two
left arms, so not what you'd call a flattering rendering for a
writer. The recent movie, "Last Will. & Testament" has an
animation of the bust. Perhaps his Roman deity was Ovid.
They very name Bend Sinister suggests a bent left,
and mischief or worse.
In Lolita, Dick's friend "Discreet Bill, who evidently took
pride in working wonders with one hand" brings in cans of beer that
he'd opened, "Wanted to withdraw. The exquisite courtesy of simple
folks. Was made to stay." Shakespeare's personal obscurity
--"Discreet Bill" -- is well attested. Implies that Shaxper was
persuaded against his will "to stay". We learn that Bill had lost
his right arm "in Italy". Of course the story goes that, despite the
voluminous evidence for Shakespeare having visited Italy in person,
based on the topographical specificity in his 'Italian' plays, there
is no evidence that William of Stratford ever left his native land.
VN of course knew this.
A bit later, "It was then noticed that one of the few thumbs
remaining to Bill was bleeding (not such a wonder-worker after
all)." One hand only, but a "few thumbs"; in other words, he had
been ALL thumbs -- a bungler. Why "wonder-worker"? Because in the
introductory material prefacing the First Folio, his so-called
friend Ben Jonson wrote of the man "Soul of the Age! The applause!
delight! the WONDER of our stage!". Not such a wonder-worker after
all. At least, somebody wasn't.
Humbert is observing Dick while Dolly tends to Bill's wound . Dick
sips beer: "This gave him countenance". I imagine that this alludes
to Shakespeare's sonnet 86, one of the so-called Rival Poet series
(Dick and Humbert were rivals after a fashion). The sonnet ends "But
when your countenance filled up his line, Then lacked I matter; that
enfeebled mine".