Editing Pale Fire (section)

==Explanation of the title==
As Nabokov pointed out himself,<ref name=NYHT>{{cite news | first = Maurice | last = Dolbier | title = Books and Authors: Nabokov's Plums | work = The New York Herald Tribune | page = 5 | date = June 17, 1962}}</ref> the title of John Shade's poem is from [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Timon of Athens]]:'' "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play "in his [[wikt:Timonian|Timonian]] cave"<!--Index, Kinbote, p. 308-->, and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles.

Some critics have noted a secondary reference in the book's title to ''[[Hamlet]]'', where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his uneffectual fire" (Act I, scene 5).<ref>{{cite book | last = Grabes | first = Herbert | year = 1995 | chapter = Nabokov and Shakespeare: The English Works | editor = Vladimir Alexandrov | title = The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov | publisher = Garland Publishing, Inc | pages = 509–510 | isbn = 0-8153-0354-8}}  See also references therein.</ref>

The title is first mentioned in the foreword: "I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of [index cards of drafts of the poem] in the pale fire of the incinerator...".