Dickens and Shakespeare’s Household Words

Though Dickens\u27 Shakespearean qualities have often been noted, less attention has been paid to the way that Dickens constructed the terms of his comparison to Shakespeare, scripting the response he received from critics from the nineteenth century to the present and shaping Shakespeare\u27s reception as well. Focusing on The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield in the context of their Victorian reception, this essay shows how Dickens used Shakespearean quotation to market his characters\u27 quotability, turning them into household words and popularizing Shakespeare\u27s sayings in turn, even as he challenged the universality of quotable phrases