SLSL Intro "Attentive Fans"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Attentive fans of Shakespeare will notice that the
name Porpentine is lifted from Hamlet, I, v.  It is an
early form of 'porcupine.'  The name Moldweorp is Old
Teutonic for 'mole'--the animal, not the infiltrator. 
I thought it would be a cute idea for people named
after two amiable fuzzy critters to be duking it out
over the fate of Europe.  Less conscientiously, there
is also an echo of the name of the reluctant spy
character Wormold, in Graham Greene's Our Man in
Havana, the recently published." (SL, "Intro," pp.
19-20)


Porpentine

"Hamlet, I, v"

Enter Ghost and Hamlet. 

HAMLET Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I'll go no 
       further. 
GHOST  Mark me. 
HAMLET           I will. 
GHOST                     My hour is almost come 
       When I to sulf'rous and tormenting flames 
       Must render up myself. 
HAMLET                         Alas, poor ghost! 
GHOST  Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing 
       To what I shall unfold. 
HAMLET Speak. I am bound to hear. 
GHOST  So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. 
HAMLET What? 
GHOST  I am thy father's spirit, 
       Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
       And for the day confined to fast in fires 
       Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 
       Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

       To tell the secrets of my prison house, 
       I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
       Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young
          blood, 
       Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their

          spheres, 
       Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part, 
       And each particular hair to stand an end, 
       Like quills upon the fearful porpentine....
    
http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/readingroom/etext/folger/04text.html

http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/collections/etext/arden/ArdenHamlet.html

http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/

http://www.bartleby.com/70/4215.html

http://www.enteract.com/~spiel/ham15.html


1.5.26 fearful porpentine: uneasy (threatened)
porcupine 

http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/readingroom/etext/folger/04text.html#1.5.26

On the ghost, do see ...

Greenblatt, Stephen.  Hamlet in Purgatory.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001.

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7024.html

And do note the next coupla lines here ...

   But this eternal blazon must not be 
   To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! 


Moldweorp

"The name Moldweorp is Old Teutonic for 'mole'"--can
anyone verify?  Else I'll ...

"the animal, not the infiltrator"--however ...


Graham Greene

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm

http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/


Our Man in Havana (1958)

"The British agent Wormold in Our Man in Havana has no
origin that I can recognize ...."

http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/havana.htm

"An interesting sidelight of Greene's tenure in the
SIS is the story of 'Garcia'. A double agent in
Lisbon, he fed the Germans disinformation, pretending 
to control a ring of agents all over England, while
all he was doing was inventing armed forces movements
and operations from maps, guides and standard military
references.  Garcia was the inspiration for Wormold 
a character in Our Man in Havana."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/1608/greene.htm

Opera by Malcolm Williamson, produced in London, 1963;
libretto by Sidney Gilliat after Graham Greene's
novel, bitterly satirizing espionage and 'security'.
 
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/356432


And see as well ...

http://www.flet.keio.ac.jp/~colloq/articles/backnumb/Col_21_HatookaKeita.pdf

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