Worse than the Bible, Even: Christie’s Allusions

This chapter explores the allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible in the novels of Agatha Christie. It argues that Christie depicts scholarly, historicist and pedantic attitudes to the Biblical text as irresponsible, and that her novels dramatize the risks of losing a shared knowledge of the Authorized Version. Her allusions to Shakespeare similarly distrust abstract and formalist approaches in favour of a personal, whole-hearted and amateur engagement with the text, though she does make use of contemporary developments in theories about Shakespearean performance.