Jo Beverley/Incidental Shakespeare
![Jo Beverley's Stanforth's Secrets](images/beverley.jpg)
In Jo Beverley's The Stanforth Secrets,
Shakespeare appears as cultural shorthand for the hero's perceptions
of his own feelings of jealousy. Of course, when Justin, Lord
Stanforth, alludes to Othello he also encodes the innocence of his
beloved Chloe, who falls under suspicion when they search her room
and find a steamy love letter and a handerkerchief:
In a moment the madness passed, leaving a
sour miasma to disgust him. It was only a handkerchief. Anyone could
have put it there. Anyone could have written the letter. He would
have to trust them both. It was that or go mad. It occurred to him
that the next time he saw Othello performed, he would have much more
sympathy for the vengeful Moor (206).
This reference is fleeting and truly
incidental to the plot and the characters more generally. Here
Shakespeare functions almost as a cultural touchstone, a reference to
the greatest extreme of jealousy and its consequences. Justin almost
immediately mediates and reunderstands his own consuming passion with
reference to Shakespeare's play--a play which incidentally also
reveals the innocence of the beloved.
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