wodehouse often has bertie wooster allude to a literary work he would have studied at school, though bertie rarely quotes precisely, giving merely a sketchy version of the original work. an example of this in "the aunt and the sluggard" occurs when bertie is at the hotel missing jeeves: "it was like what somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand" (from tennyson's "the may queen"). another example occurs when aunt isabel arrives unexpectedly at bertie's apartment: "the situation floored me. i'm not denying it. hamlet must have felt much as i did when his father's ghost bobbed up in the fairway".