In his Foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions 'My Cue,' a biography written by Vivian Darkbloom (Clare Quilty's coauthor, anagram of Vladimir Nabokov), to be published shortly:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
In Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream Nick Bottom (a weaver who plays 'Pyramus') says:
[Waking] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is “Most fair Pyramus.” Heigh-ho! Peter Quince? Flute the bellows-mender? Snout the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life, stol'n hence, and left me asleep? I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom. And I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death. (Act IV, scene 1)
The title of Shakespeare's play and John Ray, Jr. (the suave author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript) bring to mind Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or A Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903), an utopian novel by Konstantin Merezhkovski (a gifted zoologist, 1855-1921, who in 1914 was accused of paedophilia and fled Russia) set in the 27th century on a Polynesian island. At the end of Merezhkovski's novel Kostya (the narrator and main character who wakes up and sees his mother) says:
Но что это, я, кажется, еще грежу, ведь то был сон!
Но что не было сном — это мое возвращение к действительности. Печально было мое пробуждение. Опять я среди противных людей — алчных, грубых, глупых, бессердечных людей. Опять войска, фабрики, проценты, кабаки, школы, грубый рабочий, бьющий спьяна своих детей, тонкий вельможа, продающий свою совесть, честный труд до седьмого пота, бедный ученый в затхлой атмосфере лаборатории... Опять ужас смерти неизбежной, неотвратимой.
Не увижу я более и наготы. И не нужно! Прикрывайте, люди, свою наготу, наготу тела — одеждой, а наготу души — лицемерием. И то и другое у вас так некрасиво.
О, зачем увидел я этот сон! Как безотрадно отныне станет жить на земле! И кто захотел надругаться над моей и без того изболевшей душой? Какое жестокое, безжалостное существо послало мне эти яркие, радостно трепетавшие, золотисто-розовые лучи, которые так скоро потухли и после которых действительность кажется еще мрачнее.
И если то не был вещий сон, то что же ждет человечество впереди?
О люди, люди! О безумные, о несчастные люди, неужели вы никогда не осуществите мой сон!? (Day Two, Chapter VIII)
Kostya wonders what cruel, merciless creature has sent him those zolotisto-rozovye luchi (golden-pink rays) that vanished so soon. According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and everything what happens after her death (Lolita's escape from the hospital with Quilty, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). Describing Lolita's hospitalization in Elphinstone, Humbert compares a naked girl charmingly tattooed on the back of big Frank's crippled hand to a sly fairy:
I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it.
It was big Frank. He remained framed in the opened door, one hand on its jamb, leaning forward a little.
Howdy. Nurse Lore was on the telephone. She wanted to know was I better and would I come today?
At twenty paces Frank used to look a mountain of health; at five, as now, he was a ruddy mosaic of scars - had been blown through a wall overseas; but despite nameless injuries he was able to man a tremendous truck, fish, hunt, drink, and buoyantly dally with roadside ladies. That day, either because it was such a great holiday, or simply because he wanted to divert a sick man, he had taken off the glove he usually wore on his left hand (the one pressing against the side of the door) and revealed to the fascinated sufferer not only an entire lack of fourth and fifth fingers, but also a naked girl, with cinnabar nipples and indigo delta, charmingly tattooed on the back of his crippled hand, its index and middle digit making her legs while his wrist bore her flower-crowned head. Oh, delicious… reclining against the woodwork, like some sly fairy.
I asked him to tell Mary Lore I would stay in bed all day and would get into touch with my daughter sometime tomorrow if I felt probably Polynesian.
He noticed the direction of my gaze and made her right hip twitch amorously. (2.22)
In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, fairies are magical, mischievous beings led by King Oberon, Queen Titania, and the jester Puck (Robin Goodfellow), who inhabit an enchanted forest, causing chaos among the Athenian lovers with love potions and transforming Bottom's head into a donkey's, serving as agents of illusion and playfulness that highlight human folly, particularly concerning love.