The Shakespeare Play Hiding in Plain Sight in the SuPERIor Mr. PERRY in Jane Austen's Emma

I finished my immediately preceding post with the following conclusory claim:

"My point being that JA is telling her knowing readers that SHE is none other than the Peri Banou of fiction, so we should all put on the special spectacles she has fixed up for us, take a bite of the scented apples she has laid out for us to eat, and take a magic carpet ride courtesy of Air Austen!

That’s precisely when it will dart through YOU, with the speed of an ARROW, that Jane Austen was the greatest genius in the history of literature, matched only by HER “peri”/Mr. Perry, Shakespeare."

Just to get it off my chest in brief, with a more detailed followup later, I want to explain my last wink at Shakespeare as her literary "peri", as if she had been in artistic communion with the "spirit" of Shakespeare, drawing inspiration (ha ha) from his oeuvre, first deciphering HIS literary codes, and then reinventing them in a novelistic format, and in many ways surpassing her master, flying into the authorial stratosphere on her own fictional magic carpet.

Well...anyone of a punning mindset who saw the words "Peri" and "Shakespeare" in the same sentence should have made the same association that I did 10 days ago, which is what first got me started revisiting my earlier notion of Mr. Perry as an imaginary friend. It's what made me realize that Mr. Perry's name is NOT only based on the Farsi word for "fairy", it is also based on the name of a Shakespeare protagonist.

Can you guess the identity of the TITLE character to whom I am referring?

(scroll down for the answer)

 (scroll some more)

 (scroll a little more)

It's PERICLES, Prince of Tyre!

Now, Pericles is sorta the illegitimate child among Shakespeare's late Romances, existing in a twilight shadow world, barely noticed by most Shakespeare scholars and devotees alike, nearly invisible beside the bright light of The Tempest, The Winter's Tale and even Cymbeline.

This is in part because Pericles is widely believed among Shakespeare scholars to be only partly the work of Shakespeare himself, which they believe is why it is not even included in the First Folio with the rest of the established Shakespeare canon.

But.....once I drowsily woke up 10 days ago, thinking of Mr. Perry as a pun on Pericles, and then sat bolt upright in bed when I recollected that Pericles, Prince of Tyre begins with a Riddle about father-daughter incest (Mr. Woodhouse remembering Garrick's Riddle, anyone?)!

I knew then that my punning tic had served me well once again, because I have since then excavated a dozen major strands of Jane Austen's complex veiled allusion to Pericles, Prince of Tyre, in Emma (and to a much lesser extent, in Mansfield Park as well).

So...I will followup to this post sometime in the near future with more specifics, but, as I said, having disclosed the Scheherazadean Peri Banou allusion in Emma, I wanted to fill in the rest of the picture, at least in sketch form, to show the  full magnificence of the allusive matrix Jane Austen created in Emma, via the character of Mr. Perry as Mr. Woodhouse's imaginary friend, which encompasses both 1,001 Nights AND Pericles, Prince of Tyre (and probably other, related sources I have not yet glimmered on).

The Shadow Story of Jane Austen's Persuasion: Mrs. Smith's Invention of Nurse Rooke in Fuller Context

Although Ellen Moody does not mention me by name in an Austen L post this morning, she was obviously responding to the thread initiated and carried forward by my recent posts (cross-posted by me in Austen L, Janeites & my blog).....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-little-people-who-are-yet-arent.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-unfounded-news-with-which-mrs-smith.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/anna-austen-lefroys-novella-mary.html

...in which I asserted, in the part relevant to Ellen’s post this morning, that Mrs. Smith tells outright lies to Anne Elliot, by (1) fabricating an imaginary character, Nurse Rooke, (2) convincing Anne, based on nothing (and taking advantage of Anne’s being in profound denial of her own serious vision impairment), that Anne was actually let in to Mrs. Smith’s residence by Nurse Rooke, and then (3) citing Nurse Rooke as a reliable source for slanderous information about Cousin Elliot, from which Mrs. Smith immediately segues into her own additional slanders against him.

I will now respond to Ellen’s points:

Ellen: "It seems to me people are missing the central function and importance of Nurse Rooke's lack of objectivity (let's call it): Mrs Smith's most recent information is dependent on what she learns from Nurse Rooke, and while she insists the little turns and detours her story shows evidence of as having come from several not impeccable sources, don't matter, as what she has to say is true in the main."

I don't agree at all that it doesn't matter,  nor do I agree that it is true in the main. I think that immediately prior to Mrs. Smith’s allegations about Cousin Elliot, Anne has been feeling an increasingly positive regard for Cousin Elliot, even though, of course, not sufficient at that time to overpower Anne’s longstanding pining  away for Captain Wentworth. But, just as it is plausible to imagine that Henry Crawford could have eventually succeeded in his courtship of Fanny a while longer in Portsmouth, had he stayed there and resisted the temptation to go back to Maria Rushworth, so too it is plausible that at some point, had Cousin Elliot not been slandered by Mrs. Smith, he too might have succeeded with Anne, had Wentworth continued to brood on his hurt feelings a while longer.  The story was at a romantic tipping point in each case.

JA shows us, in the subtlest way, that Anne’s esteem for Cousin Elliot is severely damaged by Mrs. Smith's "revelations". Read the beginning of Ch. 23 closely:

“One day only had passed since Anne's conversation with Mrs Smith; but a keener interest had succeeded, and she was now so little touched by Mr Elliot's conduct, except by its effects in one quarter, that it became a matter of course the next morning, still to defer her explanatory visit in Rivers Street. She had promised to be with the Musgroves from breakfast to dinner. Her faith was plighted, and Mr Elliot's character, like the Sultaness Scheherazade's head, must live another day.”

Although Anne wants to convince herself otherwise, Anne is now ready to chop off Mr. Elliot’s reputation at the neck, it survives only on a very tenuous, day to day basis—Anne’s feelings for him are a whole lot less positive than they were only two days earlier, and Mrs. Smith’s story is the main cause of that large shift.

So, even though Cousin Elliot was indeed a smooth talker and someone Anne should have been wary of, Mrs. Smith, in inventing all those gory details about Mr. Elliot’s dealings with his wife, took an ambiguous situation and turned it into a seeming no-brainer. It really was decisive in shifting Anne’s attitude toward him. Cousin Elliot has been sandbagged, and Anne does not realize this. 

Ellen:  “But as many have pointed out, her story is way melodramatic, does not answer some central questions (how long ago did Mr Eliot meet Mrs Clay, what were they meeting beneath that window Mary Musgrave was looking out at; what was Mr Eliot's purpose in seeming to court Anne Elliot?). Answers there have been but none of them fully satisfying or even much satisfying.”

As I posted six months ago, I claim that Mr. Elliot did NOT meet Mrs. Clay, and that Mary Musgrove, just like Mrs. Smith, takes full advantage of Anne’s vision impairment  by convincing Anne that she has seen Mr. Elliot talking to Mrs Clay outside the White Hart Inn, when in fact it was not Cousin Elliot at all, he really WAS away as he told Anne he would be. It is Mary’s slander, in close followup to Mrs. Smith’s slanders, which are the one-two punch which induce Anne to actually cut Cousin Elliot’s reputation off at the neck, and not look back again!

A beautiful aspect of my explanation is that if we eliminate Mrs. Smith’s account (via “Nurse Rooke”) and Mary’s “sighting” from the mix, it becomes more than plausible once again that Cousin Elliot has been courting Anne Elliot for the mostly acceptable and indeed laudatory reasons he tells her—he finds her beautiful, intelligent, and sensitive. He may be a snob about family name as well, but then, so is Anne, even though she tries to rationalize her own elitism away. She, like Elizabeth Bennet, does momentarily dwell longingly on becoming the mistress of Kellynch Lodge, the opportunity for “Cinderella” to marry the Prince and finally assume her deserved regal status.

Ellen:  “I suggest that like other stories told in the other 5 novels in a third volume we were to learn those twists and turns counter, and Mrs Smith's story turn out to be too skewed. John Thorpe 's false stories about the Morlands, Edward's silence over his knowledge of Devon, Frank's behavior, past stories are woven into all the novels to be further elucidated in the close of the novel.  I believe that Wickham's story is not as black as Austen was led to make it when she lopped and chopped. Persuasion is a truncated book and (to answer the person who said why do we want twisted characters), we don't want them, they exist in the world and Austen uses the ambiguities of human personalities as central to her plot-designs.”

Ellen, you are, in my opinion, half correct. First the good news. I am in total agreement with you that there are all manner of offstage, hidden motivations , deceits, slanders, half-truths, etc., floating around everywhere in all of the JA novels, which undermine the conventional readings of the novels, in particular in regard to the baseness of the “villains” and the nobility of the “heroes”.  JA did indeed hate pictures of perfection (whether perfect heroes or perfect villains)—all was ambiguity for JA in real life.  

You do well to mention Mr. Wickham and Cousin Elliot in the same breath, because their situations are strikingly similar. Both of them enjoy the confidence of the heroine for a while, but then they are both smeared, whereupon the heroine promptly reverses opinion of them. But were the smears justified? Or have there been characters who have covertly taken a grey picture, and painted it dark black?

And now where I disagree profoundly with Ellen, who, I claim, defies Occam’s Razor in inventing a rationale that JA was somehow an author who inexplicably and foolishly destroyed key aspects of the structure of her own novels, by cutting out essential information that she ought to have left in.

It’s much simpler, and much more accurate, to aver, as I do, that JA wove these seemingly twisted characters into all her novels, but left them in the shadows deliberately, so as to allow for two utterly different plausible versions of the story to remain viable, a fork in the road where readers could either take all the hints and reconstruct a shadow story, or ignore all those hints and see the overt story.

So, I say, in the shadow story of P&P, Wickham is indeed NOT as black a character as Darcy depicts, and in the shadow story of  Persuasion, Cousin Elliot is indeed not the villain Mrs. Smith claims he is. And…for that matter, the same with Henry Crawford, Willoughby, and Frank Churchill.  Each of these 5 JA novels is a guerilla war between a more staid hero and a charismatic suitor, and the Geneva Convention does not apply, and as to which the heroine is largely clueless.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode onTwitter

Take a Magic Carpet Ride on the “Peri Banou”, Air Austen’s Luxury Air Carriage, And Use the Light from Aladdin’s Lamp to Illuminate the Shadows of Emma

In my recent posts about Mr. Perry as Mr. Woodhouse’s imaginary friend, I’ve claimed, in part, that various other characters speak about Mr. Perry as if he were still alive, knowing full well that he is not, but with the purpose of concealing from Emma that she has never been told of Mr. Perry’s death, mostly so that she won’t realize that her father is completely and profoundly delusional. (and of course, this all is in parallel to what I’ve also been saying about Nurse Rooke in Persuasion and Mrs. Long in P&P)

I’d like to briefly add a major new wrinkle to my claims, using as my springboard the observation I made in those recent posts that the word “peri” is Farsi for “fairy”, and that JA had therefore  most cleverly and aptly selected the surname “Perry” for him, her most fully realized imaginary friend (which is therefore like a fairy, spirit or ghost).

Yesterday it occurred to me to pick up on the obvious allusion that Miss Bates makes to A Thousand And One Nights when she says about the brightly lit festive room at The Crown:

“Well! This is brilliant indeed!—This is admirable!—Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it.—So well lighted up!—Jane, Jane, look!—did you ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had ALADDIN’S LAMP. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again.”

Fittingly re a thousand and one nights, I, almost exactly a year and a week ago…..

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/answer-to-my-best-austen-quiz-yet-jane.html

…. posted at length about the overt Scheherazade allusion in Persuasion, in which I claimed that JA’s allusion was complex and highly significant.

Today I make a parallel claim about the allusion to that same, vastly popular and influential work of world literature, but this time in EMMA, as to which Mr. Perry as imaginary friend or “peri” turns out to be the most significant element, one among  many symbols pointing back to the “entertainments” of that classic literary work (which first appeared in English just over a century before JA published Emma).

As with my posts about Mr. Perry, I am not going to lay out all my evidence, I will, with one  exception, merely summarize it, and leave it to those who are so inclined to take my hints and go back to the text of Emma themselves, and see the rest of the evidence for themselves!

The key point is that JA was, I am now certain, alluding specifically to one particular tale among the 1,001 told by Scheherazade to the demented Sultan (who, like the protagonist of Garrick’s Riddle, takes a new virgin every night, to first behead her sexually, and then to behead her literally---no coincidence there!)—the tale of PERI Banou.

Here is a wonderful synopsis of most of the plot of the tale recounted by Marina Warner in her recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, at p. 71 et seq:

“Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peri Banou:  “Three brothers, sons of the sultan of the Indies, are rivals for the hand of the exquisitely beautiful Princess Nouronnihar, their first cousin and an orphan, who lives in the palace with them. The three princes are dispatched by their father at the beginning of the story: the one who brings back the greatest wonder shall marry her.  Prince Houssain, the eldest, …[buys] a flying CARPET that can take you in an instant where you want to be. …Ali… buys a TELESCOPE carved from IVORY, through which you can see anything and everything, whatever is happening in the world at the time. Ahmed, the youngest, [buys] an artificial APPLE which exudes a perfume that can heal any disease.

Once the brothers meet again at an INN on the road as arranged, they see through Ali’s TELESCOPE that the beautiful Princess has been taken terribly ill and is on the point of death. The three brothers immediately mount the flying CARPET and ride to her rescue—and then use the magic APPLE to cure her. Revived, she still has no say in her choice of suitor, and the father continues to declare himself undecided. So he sets a further test…the one who shoots an ARROW the farthest will win her for his bride.

Ahmed’s ARROW flies out of sight and he’s disqualified; she marries the winner, Prince Ali, while Houssain, in  his fury at losing her, renounces the CROWN and becomes a dervish. Ahmed meanwhile sets out to find his ARROW and finds himself straying…until he discovers it pointing the way through rocks to an iron DOOR; through this he descends and enters…FAIRYLAND.

PERI Banou comes  to greet him, leads him into her palace where she sits him down and tells him that she has contrived to bring him to her by her magic arts, for the CARPET, the GLASS and the APPLE were her handiwork, and she then carried off his ARROW. If he seizes his chance with her now, she promises to make him happy. According to FAIRY law, she explains, women can be forward and choose their love; she has chosen him, if he’ll agree. Prince Ahmed needs no  persuading, and the ceremony takes place then and there between the two of them, contracted and sealed with  a thousand kisses…..(and so on)”

  

Do I need to explain why I put the words “apple”,  “telescope/glass”, “arrow”, “fairyland”, “crown”, “fairy”, “door”,  and “peri” in all caps? Anyone familiar with the text of Emma, and in particular with the speeches of Miss Bates, will know EXACTLY why I did this.

But in particular, I draw everyone’s attention to the following speech by Miss Bates, which is the epicenter of JA’s complex allusion. Start here in Chapter 27….

"Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well; and Jane caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Woodhouse?—I am so glad to hear such a good account. Mrs. Weston told me you were here.—Oh! then, said I, I must run across, I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me just to run across and entreat her to come in; my mother will be so very happy to see her—and now we are such a nice party, she cannot refuse.—'Aye, pray do,' said Mr. Frank Churchill, 'Miss Woodhouse's opinion of the instrument will be worth having.'—But, said I, I shall be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.—'Oh,' said he, 'wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'—For, would you believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's SPECTACLES.—The rivet came out, you know, this morning.—So very obliging!—For my mother had no use of her SPECTACLES—could not put them on. And, by the bye, every body ought to have two pair of SPECTACLES; they should indeed. Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know. At one time Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I, Patty do not come with your bad news to me. Here is the rivet of your mistress's SPECTACLES out. Then the baked APPLES came home, Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the Wallises, always—I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be uncivil and give a very rude answer, but we have never known any thing but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know? Only three of us.—besides dear Jane at present—and she really eats nothing—makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats—so I say one thing and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked APPLES, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before—I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked APPLE. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We have APPLE-dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent APPLE-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these ladies will oblige us.…I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of.—Oh! my mother's SPECTACLES. So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill! 'Oh!' said he, 'I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind excessively.'—Which you know shewed him to be so very.... Indeed I must say that, much as I had heard of him before and much as I had expected, he very far exceeds any thing.... I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston, most warmly. He seems every thing the fondest parent could.... 'Oh!' said he, 'I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort excessively.' I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out the baked APPLES from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very obliging as to take some, 'Oh!' said he directly, 'there is nothing in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest-looking home-baked APPLES I ever saw in my life.' That, you know, was so very.... And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they are very delightful APPLES, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice—only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them done three times—but Miss Woodhouse will be so good as not to mention it. The APPLES themselves are the very finest sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell—some of Mr. Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and certainly there never was such a keeping APPLE anywhere as one of his trees—I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the other day—for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating these APPLES, and we talked about them and said how much she enjoyed them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock….”

…and continue until here in Chapter 28…

"Oh! Mr. Knightley, one moment more; something of consequence—so shocked!—Jane and I are both so shocked about the APPLES!"

"What is the matter now?"

"To think of your sending us all your store APPLES. You said you had a great many, and now you have not one left. We really are so shocked! Mrs. Hodges may well be angry. William Larkins mentioned it here. You should not have done it, indeed you should not. Ah! he is off. He never can bear to be thanked. But I thought he would have staid now, and it would have been a pity not to have mentioned.... Well, (returning to the room,) I have not been able to succeed. Mr. Knightley cannot stop. He is going to Kingston. He asked me if he could do any thing...."

…and don’t overlook the mention in the interim about CARRIAGE rides as a kind of metaphorical “magic carpet” rides!

My point being that JA is telling her knowing readers that SHE is none other than the Peri Banou of fiction, so we should all put on the special spectacles she has fixed up for us, take a bite of the scented apples she has laid out for us to eat, and take a magic carpet ride courtesy of Air Austen!

That’s precisely when it will dart through YOU, with the speed of an ARROW, that Jane Austen was the greatest genius in the history of literature, matched only by HER “peri”, Shakespeare.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Perry/Peri's on Horseback & In Dreams

In Janeites, a skeptic raised the subject of the scene in Ch. 41 when Emma,
Harriet, Miss Bates, Jane, Mr. Weston, Mrs. Weston and Frank all seem to
see Mr. Perry passing the gates of Hartfield on horseback one evening.

In fact, I would have earlier posted about that passage as a prime example
in support of my claims, but it would have made my already long post much
longer. But now that it's been raisee, I’m thrilled to address it. I’ve
copied it out in its brief entirety, below, for ready reference.

First, JA makes it clear that whoever it is who passes by on horseback at
that moment, he is far enough away that no one greets him verbally. So it
would be easy for a misattribution (in this case, I claim, deliberate) to
be made. JA also makes a point of saying that “the gentlemen” spoke of
Perry’s horse, and it must have taken less than a minute for the horseman
in question to pass into and out of sight of the group. “The gentlemen”
would be Frank and Mr. Weston. This is not presented as objective
narration, and I claim that it is Frank who raises the subject. Why?

Because Frank is a prankster, seizing that moment, being himself well
aware that the “Mr. Perry” everybody always talks about is actually not
alive, but that Mr. Woodhouse and Emma believe he is. Frank cannot resist
this opportunity, especially because he has already been asked to help
preserve the secret. He takes what really happened, which is that Mrs.
Weston, after the Christmas party at Randalls not long before (when John
Knightley teased Mr. Woodhouse about the dangers of riding in a carriage
in a “snowstorm” for 1mile) must have written to Frank to alert him as to
the sad reality of Mr. Woodhouse’s delusional “Mr. Perry”, and of Emma not
being in on the truth either.

So what does Frank do?  He deliberately stirs the pot, and raises, in
Emma’s presence, the very subject of Mr. Perry (Mr. Woodhouse’s “peri” or
spirit), just to put Mrs. Weston on the spot.

Frank is an imp, and so he decides to play with dangling the truth in
front of Emma’s nose. You can go to the bank that he never dreamed
anything about Perry. That’s all raillery. He’s teasing, he’s winking, to
everyone present except Emma, that Perry is Mr. Woodhouse’s “dream
character”— that is just Frank’s playful invention, to force her to react
without giving away the game to Emma.

Where have we seen Frank engage in this sort of teasing, almost cruel,
hinting and winking at a secret? Of course!  He has been doing it for half
the novel about his secret relationship with Jane. This is absolutely
characteristic of the Frank Churchill that every Janeite knows!

And as validation of my reading, just read Mrs. Weston’s reactions AS IF
this is happening as I’ve laid out, test my claim out empirically by
making that assumption and seeing what happens, and you tell me if it
works. I say it works like a charm. That’s why she “looks surprized”,
that’s why she says “impossible!”, “never heard of it till this moment”.
Frank is having a jolly good time with this joke, and he makes his
stepmother very uncomfortable in the process.

And that’s why he revisits it 13 chapters later, near the very end of the
novel, and Jane, trying not to smile, gently chastises him for it then.
And that’s why Mr. Weston and Miss Bates both chime in on the absurdity of
Frank’s dream—this is all damage control! They’re trying to cover over for
Emma—and it works—Emma tunes it all out.

And---wonderful extra hint-- JA also goes out of her way to show that Emma
has tuned this all out:
[Mr. Weston] “…Well, Frank, your dream certainly shews that Highbury is in
your thoughts when you are absent. Emma, you are a great dreamer, I
think?"
Emma was out of hearing. She had hurried on before her guests to prepare
her father for their appearance, and was beyond the reach of Mr. Weston's
hint.”

Indeed Emma is beyond the reach of all such hints. But Jane Austen’s
readers need no longer be beyond their  reach.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode  on Twitter

Anna Austen Lefroy’s Novella Mary Hamilton as Shakespearean Midrash on Mrs. Smith aka Miss Hamilton & her Mrs. Speed from Aunt Jane’s Persuasion

As soon as I wrote the following a few minutes ago…

“And, by the way, did you notice the name of one of the women whom Anne Elliot names as the person who opened the door to her the day before? It's Mrs. SPEED---as in Speed, the shifty, Machiavellian servant who plays both sides of the game in the scheming among the suitors Valentine and Proteus in Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona?

Wheels within wheels within wheels! “

…I remembered something else of significance from my earlier research which I now see, upon revisiting, is even more deeply embedded inside this same matrix of literary sleuthing connected to Nurse Rooke in Persuasion than I at first understood.

Mrs. Smith, we are told several times in Chapter 17 of Persuasion, was previously Miss Hamilton. We never learn her Christian name, but is it possible that Anna Austen Lefroy thought it was (or should be) Mary?  Indeed, is that at least one important reason why Anna chose the name “Mary Hamilton” as the name of the heroine of her 1833 novella, i.e., published a mere 16 years after her beloved Aunt Jane’s death, and  then also used (as Anielka pointed out in Janeites in 2010) an epigraph from Two Gentlemen of Verona?

Here’s what I wrote in 2009 in AustenL about Mary Hamilton:

“Diana, I have read Mary Hamilton and although of course it does not approach JA's fiction in quality, it is nonetheless very nicely done. It shows good taste, restraint and intelligence, but what is most endearing about it to Janeites is that it demonstrates on every page that Anna had read, and understood on a deep level, all of JA's fiction, and Mary Hamilton is a quiet, subtle celebration of all of JA's novels (for starters, it's not a coincidence that Persuasion's Mrs. Smith's maiden name was Hamilton!).

And, here’s what Anielka also wrote in 2010 in Janeites about Mary Hamilton, after first exploring various specific textual curiosities in Anna’s novella:

“And if you really think there's no subtext, have a look at the quote from Shakespeare that prefaces the story; it's taken from Two Gentlemen of Verona. Those of you who know the play will instantly be reminded of Proteus being split from his Julia and will be surprised that the quote is not from Proteus, Valentine, Silvia or Julia but an exchange between Launce and Speed. Launce has a great deal to say about dogs being taken with him on a journey and the tears a dog does not shed at parting. "the dog is me, and I AM MYSELF. ...............Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!" The very last words of Mary Hamilton are "I am myself".

FYI, here is the epigraph to Mary Hamilton:

Speed.—But shall she marry him?
Launce.—No.

Speed.—How then, shall he marry her?
Launce.—No, neither.

When I now connect the dots between my own and Anielka’s earlier speculations, and then factor in Nurse Rooke and Mrs. Speed as further veiled allusions to Two Gentlemen’s Speed in Persuasion, I believe this supports a further extrapolation, which is that Anna Austen Lefroy understood that veiled allusion to Shakespeare in Persuasion, and winked at it in this way in her novella, all to the greater glory of Aunt Jane. After all, the whole point of Mrs. Smith’s manipulation of Anne by slandering Cousin Elliot is to stop Anne from marrying Cousin Elliot, as she fears she is about to do, and instead to push her toward Captain Wentworth (a scheme, by the way, in which Mrs. Smith is not going rogue, but is in cahoots with other characters in Persuasion, most notably the Crofts and—believe it or not—Mary Musgrove and Mrs. Clay!)

So, add a few more wheels within those other wheels within wheels. This is getting to be a veritable literary matryoshka!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter