SOURCE: Hirsh, James. “Samuel Clemens and the Ghost of Shakespeare.” Studies in the Novel 24, no. 3 (fall 1992): 251-72.

In the following essay, Hirsh traces the influence of Shakespeare on Huckleberry Finn, and explores the anxieties Twain experienced in comparing himself with Shakespeare.

Because Shakespeare's works are so famous, a later writer's adaptation of Shakespeare is apt to seem trite unless the source is significantly transformed, but this transformation may obscure the influence. Like the location of the purloined letter, Shakespeare's influence sometimes does not become obvious until after it has been pointed out. The extent of Samuel Clemens's indebtedness to Shakespeare, for example, has only recently begun to be charted in detail—by Howard G. Baetzhold, Alan Gribben, and others.¹ The present essay is an attempt not only to indicate further examples of this indebtedness, which is often disguised by the particular methods of transformation used by Clemens, but...