The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.0468  Monday, 14 March 2005

From:           Christopher Morrow <
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Date:           Friday, 11 Mar 2005 09:31:49 -0600
Subject:        Shakespeare Reference?

A colleague of mine, not on this list, had a Shakespeare question that I
couldn't answer.  I was hoping someone the list might know of the line
he is looking for.  I have posted his original query below.  Thanks,

****

I'm hoping to tap your knowledge of Shakespeare. I'm working with an
essay by John Edgar Wideman but having trouble tacking down an allusion
that appears in his text*I think it is to one of Shakespeare's play but
could be wrong. Here's the relevant passage:

"...I can't be Tonto to his Lone Ranger. Amos to his Andy. Tambo to his
Bones. Stepin to his Fetchit."

Identifying the characters to which he refers is no problem. But I am
having trouble tracking down the syntactic pattern in which each member
of this series is cast: "X to his Y."

I suspected Shakespeare and that the Wideman version was a variation on
some "play X to your Y" formulation in one of his plays. But after
several mind-numbing searches using online concordances, I've come up
empty. Does this pattern ring any bells?

Many thanks in advance for any help you can supply.

****

Thanks,
Chris

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