Hamlet and Huck Finn

Where best to find references to Shakespeare's masterpiece than in Mark Twain's masterpiece?  In revisiting the latter's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I ran into the former's Hamlet.  I don't know whether my subconscious remembered this confluence of literary icons from a previous reading of Huck Finn decades ago, but there it was, front and center in Chapter 21.

In lieu of retyping the relevant passage, I found the following breakdown on the Internet at http://jmohsen.weebly.com/shakespearean-allusions-in-huck-finn.html.  It was so well arranged that I copied it below.  The website includes further dissection of the soliloquy, including the original citations from each of the three Shakespearean works quoted.

Allusion in the Hamlet Soliloquy in Huck Finn

In Huck Finn, the King performs a creative version of Hamlet’s soliloquy, with allusions to three of Shakespeare’s play.  Below is the actual breakdown of the allusions, with a color code to understand the original text behind each allusion.

Key 
Hamlet’s Soliloquy

Other Hamlet
Macbeth
Richard III

Soliloquy
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage,
Is sicklied o'er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery- go!

created by Yvonne Hangsterfer and Jerome Mohsen (c) 2012