“We’ve had quite a Shakespearean evening, haven’t we?”: Shakespeare and Dorothy Sayers

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) is famous for her classic crime thrillers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In “Gaudy Night” (1936) and “Busman’s Honeymoon” (1937), Wimsey shares the stage with crime writer Harriet Vane: their relationship highlights the issue of the educated woman between the two World Wars. Both Oxford educated, they play a never-ending quotation game: Early Modern English literature has pride of place. In “Busman’s Honeymoon”, Shakespeare is proposed as an indisputable moral authority, asserting the never-wavering rightfulness of the detective, only occasionally hinting at self-righteousness. This is what the present article investigates, by exploring the use of the playwright’s quotations against the issues of criminal, social and gender justice.