Oldenshaw claims he read for Law, and can perform "When I went to the Bar as a very young man" by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, from their 1882 comic opera "Iolanthe".
Corinna alludes to the Biblical Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector from Luke 18:9-14 when Bailey offers up Matthew 5:28 ("whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.").
Oldenshaw deliberately misquotes Act I Scene IV of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth": "There's no art/To find the mind's construction in the face". Defraits counters with his Sonnet 138: "When my love swears that she is made of truth,/I do believe her, though I know she lies," ("a depressing sonnet, if I may say so," ends Oldenshaw).
Oldenshaw's tale of Charles, Baron Bowen and Queen Victoria's 1875 Law Courts opening is correct. Rather than "infirmities" it is often said to have been "conscious as we are of one another's shortcomings"