When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literature and Philosophy
- William Shakespeare (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.23, 4.1.59)
- Honoré de Balzac (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Émile Zola (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Stendhal (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.59)
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1.1.opening stage directions, 2.2.30, 4.1.59)
- Karl Marx (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Friedrich Engels (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Peter Kropotkin (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Max Stirner (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Henrik Ibsen (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.59)
- George Bernard Shaw (1.1.opening stage directions)
- August Strindberg (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Algernon Charles Swinburne (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.59)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Oscar Wilde (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.59)
- Ernest Dowson (1.1.opening stage directions, 4.1.59)
- Rudyard Kipling (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Alexandre Dumas (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Victor Hugo (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Charles Lever (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Voltaire (4.1.59)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (4.1.59)
- Walt Whitman (4.1.59)
- Edgar Allan Poe (4.1.59)
- David Hume, History of England (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Adolphe Thiers, History of the Consulate and Empire (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Tobias Smollett, History of England (1.1.opening stage directions)
- Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1.1.opening stage directions)
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth (4.1.62)
- William Shakespeare, Othello (1.1.39, 4.1.139)
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (4.1.43-44)
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (4.1.139)
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (4.1.224)
- William Shakespeare, Richard III (4.1.214)
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (2.2.39)
- Charles Baudelaire, "Be Drunken" (4.1.48)
- Charles Baudelaire, "Epilogue" (4.1.54)
- Ernest Dowson, "Cynara" (4.1.56)
- Rudyard Kipling, "Ford O' Kabul River" (4.1.156)
- Rudyard Kipling, "Sestina of the Tramp-Royal" (4.1.84)
- Rudyard Kipling, "Mother o' Mine" (4.1.86)
- Charles Gabet, libretto to Les cloches de Corneville (4.1.156-217)
- Oscar Wilde, "The Harlot's House" (4.1.178)
- Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (4.1.206)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "XCVII A Superscription" (4.1.214)
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, "A Leave-taking" (4.1.234, 4.1.236, 4.1.240)
Historical Figures
- The First Duke of Wellington (4.1.25)
Pop Culture
- Edwin Booth (4.1.139)