ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to begin a study by examining Charlotte Smith’s appropriations of William Shakespeare. Lingering notions of Shakespeare as a “natural” and undisciplined writer offered women a model for achieving success without the credentials of a university education. Many of Smith’s sonnets, nearly half of which are written in the Shakespearean form, transform the Renaissance lament for an unattainable or lost love into an elegy for personal anxiety or loss. Shakespeare “absorbs” the lyric into his dramatic storytelling to increase our knowledge of his character and her situation. In both Cymbeline and King Lear, Shakespeare allows his characters to express their grief to others, though in different ways. Allusions to Shakespeare that are interspersed with scientific references function for Smith as a means of equating herself with men. In deliberately echoing Shakespeare’s lines, Smith allegorizes the French emigrants, although not without judging their previous lives of extravagance in France.
