-------- 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".

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