NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2

[David Morris]

--- Don Corathers <gumbo at fuse.net> wrote:
> Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a larger
> significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur = Ophelia,
> does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now that's
> funny.

I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam Shade
and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother (did she
really die?).  If you follow the chronology you'll see that:

1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born.  We don't know how he died (except the
poem's info).
3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born.  He died in a sports-plane crash.
4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit in the
poem), nor even her name.
5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris Acht) were
both born in 1869.  Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.

I don't know where this leads...

David Morris


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