As the text suggests (repeatedly), the title Pale Fire may come from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens 4:3, line 423:

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun; The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen From general excrement, each thing's a thief; The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power Have uncheck'd theft. Love not yourselves; away!

Shade pulls the title from within the poem on line 962: "Help me, Will! Pale Fire", at the end of a verse enumerating his published works and implying that he has dispensed with the (perhaps peculiar) habit of certain authors (for instance Faulkner) of adopting their titles from phrases in other author's works (usually Shakespeare). Note that Shade has quoted from a passage denouncing thievery (making this a doubly odd or at least ironic choice...). Furthermore, Nabokov loudly criticized Scott Moncrieff's translation of Proust's _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_, not least because of the translator's unaccountable adoption of phrases from Shakespeare for use as titles, making Nabokov's choice for his novel certainly a peculiar one.

Interestingly, recent evidence suggests that portions of Timon of Athens, mainly most of Act III, were *not* written by Shakespeare but rather by Christopher Middleton. The phrase "pale fire" remains attributed to Shakespeare, however.

Like Gradus, the title of the poem/work emerges from the commentary gradually. See page 80 where Kinbote quotes this passage from Shakespeare as a reverse translation from Zemblan, transposing the genders and swapping "pale fire" for "silvery light". See also page 285 where Kinbote is unable to find the origin to the title of the poem since his Zemblan edition of Timon of Athens "certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of 'pale fire'". See also page 81 where Kinbote comes tantalizingly close to uttering the title with "pale and diaphanous final phase". See page 15 in the Foreword where Kinbote uses the title descriptively: "the pale fire of the incinerator".

The title may also be found in Yeats' "A Poet to His Beloved":

I BRING you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams;
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams
I bring you my passionate rhyme.


Arguably, the theme of this poem has something in common with Shade's.



The Dedication: "To Vera"

All of VN's work is dedicated to his wife. In this particular case, given the novel's attention to Shade's relationship with Sybil (reading the poem to her, addressing her from within it), "To Vera" has been linked to "To Sybil" as evidence toward a particular interpretation of authorship (the so-called "Shadean" reading -- for a discussion of the Shadean reading as well as other theories see Boyd's article here



The Epigraph:

"This reminds me of the ludicrous account[...]"

There is a paragraph preceding the one quoted that introduces Hodge in Life of Samuel Johnson; this is the larger quote:

"I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;' and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'

"This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, 'But Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.'" (Life of Johnson, Chapter 41)

I will delay sponsoring any theories for the time being, but:

Perhaps most importantly, this is described by Boswell as a "ludicrous account".

Kinbote would have himself a sort of Boswell for Shade (among other things), and the image of "a young gentleman of good family [...] running about town shooting" summons to mind another of PF's characters, but if we are to make substitutions, then which (or who) is Johnson's favorite cat? And why?

Kinbote shan't be shot; no, no, Kinbote shall not be shot? Shade shan't be shot: no, no, Shade shall not be shot? Goldsworth shall not be... and so on.

On page 112 Kinbote says, "some cats are less repugnant than others to the good-natured dog told to endure the bitter effluvium of an alien genus". The context is of Kinbote's brief time spent in the company of Fleur de Fyler, whose repeated attempts to seduce him (Fleur de Fyler -> flower defiler -> de-virginizer) are met with annoyance or indifference (Kinbote is homosexual).

Incidentally, there is what appears to be a typo in this quote as it appears in _Pale Fire_, namely the colon in the last sentence "But Hodge shan't be shot: no" appears as a semicolon in Boswell's work (in all the sources at my disposal anyway, none of which have been translated from Zemblan).

Another text for Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson