Pynchon, Shakespeare, Kyd

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Basileios Drolias asks about influences on Pynchon for "The Courier's
Tragedy" in LOT49.  Rather than look directly at Shakespeare and Kyd, I's 
suggest Marlowe (for the meter), Webster (for rotten counts and clergy),
and John Ford [playwright, not the film director] for such bits of gore
as the tongue brandished on a sword, etc.

I've suggested before that the whole device of the courier being mugged by
men in black might have been lifted from Fritz Lang's movie DER MUDE TOD
[DESTINY], cited in CR.

--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN