Literary allusions

silvana

There are a lot of literary allusions in the books of Agatha Christie. For instance in Hercule Poirot's Christmas a character quote Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare)

"Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?"

Do you know other literary allusions?

Tommy_A_Jones

In Caribbean Mystery and The Clocks There is the line Full of the Milk of Human Kindness

mike1410

'Taken at the Flood' - the title of the book is an extract from a speech by Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Ceaser. The name Enoch Arden, used as a pseudonym by a character in the book, is the title of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"The Mirror Crack''d from Side to Side" - the book title and the phrase repeatedly misquoted by Dolly Bantry of "the doom has come upon me" when describing the look on Marina Gregg's face are both from the same verse in 'The Lady of Shalott' again by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Indeed, Agatha quotes Shakespeare in no less than 14 of her books;

• Murder on the Orient Express (As You Like It)
• Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Macbeth)
• Sad Cypress (Twelfth Night)
• Absent in the Spring ("Sonnet 98")
• Sparkling Cyanide (Hamlet)
• Taken at the Flood (Julius Caesar)
• Destination Unknown (Twelfth Night)
• The Pale Horse (Macbeth)
• A Caribbean Mystery (Hamlet)
• A Caribbean Mystery (Macbeth)
• Third Girl (Hamlet)
• Endless Night (Othello)
• By The Pricking of My Thumbs (Macbeth)
• Hallowe'en Party (Hamlet)
• Curtain (Romeo and Juliet)
• Curtain (Othello)

Tommy_A_Jones

I think the lShakespearean Line in A Caribbean Mystery is also in The Clocks

kaberi.chakrabarty

In Murder on the Orient Express, when Poirot first boards the train, one of the cabins is supposed to be occupied by a Mr. Harris, and Poirot says something like "I read my Dickens. Mr. Harris will not appear." Does anyone know what this is supposed to be a reference to?

mike1410

I don't know about Mr Harris, but in Dickens book Martin Chuzzlewit one of the characters has an imaginary friend called Mrs Harris. I suppose, taken literally, that if Mrs H is imaginary then by default so is her husband Mr H. Perhaps it is this non-existent person to whom Poirot is referring?.

Tommy_A_Jones

Yes, like in The Importance in Being Ernest, Mr Worthing has a "Cousin called Bunberry and in a Wodehouse book someone poses as a Mrs Bunberry