The episode title is from Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.
Ant Donahue- Antonio/Anthony is the merchant in The Merchant of Venice, as well as a character in Much Ado, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar and Henry VIII. Shylock wanted a pound of flesh from Antonio when he defaults on a loan.
- Nate = Nathaniel is in Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labours Lost.
- Cynthia Sly= Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker in The Taming of the Shrew.
- Touchstone Farm = Touchstone the clown from As You Like It
- Dogberry = Dogberry from Much Ado, who gives evidence as a nightwatchman. He also confuses his words as this one does.
- Portia = Shylock's daughter in Merchant of Venice.
- The owner of the poultry farm, Dennis Regan, is a merchant as well, and deals in "pounds of flesh".
- Regan= cruel daughter character in King Lear
- Frank calls Rupert Shylock "a regular Fagin". Fagin and Shylock are both famously controversial depictions of Jewish characters in English fiction.
- Rupert Shylock is a lawyer. Shakespeare's character of the same name wanted his "pound of flesh" from Antonio, which is what some cynics say lawyers want as well.
- Stacey Lamb = Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare were the abridged version for Victorian children.
- "Grief fills the room up of my absent child" King John
- "This growing image of thy fiend-like face" Titus Andronicus
- "Thou art thy mother's glass" Sonnet 3
- "I fear I am not in my perfect mind." King Lear
- "To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores" The Winter's Tale