Dickens and Shakespeare: How the Poet Influenced the Novelist

Jan 25, 2012
Mary Phelan

Entertaining Books... - Mary Phelan

A light-hearted look at the ways that Renaissance playwright, William Shakespeare, influenced the novels of nineteenth-century writer, Charles Dickens

The Beginning

There is no doubt that Charles Dickens (1812 -1870) was influenced by Renaissance poet and compatriot, William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Like Shakespeare, Dickens served time as an actor, stage producer and playwright, his most notable success being The Frozen Deep (1856), His novels are filled with stagey scenes acted out by extraordinary characters such as Fagin, Quilp and Magwitch. Above all, there is an unmistakeable thread of Shakespearian influence running through the plots of Dickens's major novels.

Lost and Found

Dickens's plots abound with orphans longing for their parents and parents wringing their hearts and hands over the loss of their children, of double identities, and subjects given up for dead returning to the land of the living. In Our Mutual Friend, John Rokesmith proves to be John Harmon, who was thought to have drowned in the River Thames. In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare brings Hermione back to life by the rather curious device of her masquerading as a statue. Then, Hermione is reunited with her long-lost daughter, Perdita. Returning to Dickens, the eponymous Oliver Twist is rescued by a prosperous friend of his late grandfather after an unlikely sojourn in the workhouse, followed by an improbable association with thieves and prostitutes.

Haunting and Haunted

Prevailent in the novels of Dickens is the haunted nature of many of his characters. With the exception of A Christmas Carol, the 'ghosts' in the stories of Dickens are notional rather than real - if a ghost can be 'real', that is. That ghost that appears to Hamlet at the opening of the eponymous play is real in that it can be seen. The majority of Dickensian ghosts, while no less evocative, are those of the heart and mind. In Chapter 5 of Bleak House, Esther Summerson enters the building in which her father, unknown to her, is a lodger. A lesser novelist would have drawn attention to this, but such is the subtlety of the narrative that Dickens does not. He leaves this thread of the story for the reader to pick up, later on.

Faces in the Fire

Indeed, we never encounter Captain Hawdon, except anecdotally - he was very good to me, he was - and as a corpse when he is dead. Yet, like the ghost in Hamlet, his presence permeates the entire plot.

Later in the story, Esther encounters Lady Deadlock, and sees broken bits of her young self in her mother's face. Pip, the hero of Great Expectations, has a similar experience when he encounters Molly, the housekeeper of lawyer Jaggers: a face rising out of the cauldron. Pip correctly concludes that Molly is the mother of Estella, the object of his obsessional love.

Parallel Heroines

Helena, the heroine of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, twins with Lizzie Hexham of Our Mutual Friend. Both are young women in love with men above their social station, men whom they can never hope to marry. However, by the close of these tales, both women are wed to the men of their choice. Helena wins the favour of the Countess of Rousillon by becoming a practitioner of medicine and saving the life of the King of France. This serves her well, since the focus of her love is Bertram, the son of the Countess.

Reluctant Grooms

Helena wins Bertram's hand in marriage, but that surly subject rejects her physically, and goes instead to fight for the Duke of Florence - Shakespeare's comment, perhaps, on the institution of matrimony. Helena follows Bertram and finds him trying to seduce the virginal Diana. By highly improbable machinations, Helena and Diana swap places in Bertram's bed, so that he makes Helena his common-law wife without realising who she is. All's well that ends well? I never thought so either.

Mutual Ends

In Our Mutual Friend, middle-class lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn loves the lovely, working-class Lizzie Hexham. She returns the compliment, but class scruples stand in the way of their marriage. However, this does not prevent Wrayburn from pursuing Lizzie for 'improper' purposes. Lizzie resists. However, Eugene is trashed and left for dead by another admirer of Lizzie, a highly jealous one. Lizzie risks her reputation - highly important to Victorian women - to save Eugene, and earns her just reward - a middle-class, though much-damaged husband.

Poetry and Motion

The plots of both play and novel are convoluted and cumbersome, designed to keep punters reading - Our Mutual Friend was published in serial form - and watching, rather than conforming to any conventions of literature. Happily for us, these two writers transcended notional creative barriers rather than remaining within them. And Charles Dickens did not just create a gallery of rogues, belles and gallants to parallel those of the Bard. His language, too, rose to poetry when the occasion demanded - O, the solemn woods over which the light and shadow traveled swiftly as if Heavenly wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air ...(Bleak House). I rest my case.