Creating the Creation: Pale Fire and The Tempest

      My paper will explore connections between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Nabokov’s Pale Fire, specifically those regarding the power of creation and its products.  In addition to comparing characters and themes fundamental to both, I am especially interested in the role of the creator.  By creator I don’t just mean the author, but the characters within the texts that seem to explicitly create (John Shade as a poet and Prospero as a conjurer of magic), the commentators to those texts, whether it be explicit (Kinbote) or implicit (the editors) commentary, the inspiration that elicits the creation (Hazel Shade) and the reception of the audience and its involvement in the work.  I also will investigate the role of the characters within each text as shades or foils to one another.  While some may seem absolutely contradictory, others play similar roles.  Ultimately I want to assert that Pale Fire, like The Tempest, is a work that requires the participation of many actors to be successful.  For it is quite obvious that John Shade’s Pale Fire could not stand effectively on its own, that Kinbote’s preface, commentary and index require the reader to interact with the text in a playful manner, that Hazel Shade’s significance in the novel is far beyond what meets the eye, and that while Nabokov may be the “real” man behind the incredibly impractical novel, when we read Pale Fire we are ultimately spellbound by a suspension of disbelief and accept his fantasy world.