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I first became really aware of it, years ago, as the name of a character in "Penmarric" by Susan Howatch. In the novel, the mother of Mariana states that she had whiled away the time during her pregnancy by reading Tennyson, and that's how she was inspired to name her daughter Mariana. When she tells her husband that she wants to use that name, he asks, "After the girl in 'Measure for Measure'?" and she replies, "After the girl in Tennyson's poem", and is then informed by her husband that Tennyson took his inspiration from Shakespeare.

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Anyway, I had never read the poem when I first read the novel and didn't know how sad, gloomy, and tragic it is. The fictional mother in the novel didn't find that off-putting, however. I don't think that I would in real life, either. I don't think. But maybe.