The Winter's Tale -- Shakespeare -- December 24, 2023

Warm days will never cease, blog. Really, really good. 

Folger, the play.

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An Incredibly Great Tale

Amazing how much one can learn from one play.

Once one knows the story, then it's fun to go back and understand world geography and history back in the 13th century.

For the history, geography, etc., I recommend Richard Paul Roe's The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels, c. 2011.

The big thing I was curious to understand: the issue of Bohemia's coastline. Richard Paul Roe explains it very, very well. Simply amazing.

Page 254: a shepherd appears searching for lost sheep browsing on seaside ivy. Then footnote/end note #3, page 263, "Mares eat oats and does eat oats, but little lambs eat ivy." Ivy that grows on the ground is not toxic to sheep, though it is to horses and some species of deer.

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A Winter's Tale

One thing led to another and another and now I'm back in my Shakespeare phase. LOL.

I mentioned the other day that this was one of two books I checked out from our local library to read over the holidays.

• The Winter's Tale, The Everyman Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, c. 1991, editor, John F Andrews, Shakespearean expert.

Once one knows the true writer of the Shakespeare plays, the plays make so much more sense and so much more fun to read, and that's so true of The Winter's Tale.  

I don't recall having ever read The Winter's Tale seriously so this has been a lot of fun.

Somewhere along the line, I said to myself: I know this story. It happened in real life -- of course, not all of it but the central theme certainly did.  

The play is set in Bohemia (and Sicily) and was staged for Queen Elizabeth's wedding -- no, the other Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth Stuart (19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662):

Electress of the Palatinate and briefly Queen of Bohemia as the wife of Frederick V of the Palatinate. 

The couple's selection for the crown by the nobles of Bohemia was part of the political and religious turmoil setting off the Thirty Years' War.

Since her husband's reign in Bohemia lasted over one winter, she is called "the Winter Queen."

Princess Elizabeth was the only surviving daughter of James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, and Ireland, and his queen, Anne of Denmark, and she was the elder sister of Charles I. Born in Scotland, she was named in honour of her father's predecessor and cousin in England, Elizabeth I. 

As a reminder, origin of the name, biblically:

Elizabeth "My God has sworn," was the mother of John the Baptist, the wife of Zechariah, and maternal aunt of Mary, mother of Jesus.

That's one source. It is unclear exactly how Mary, mother Jesus, and Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, were related. No one knows. I like the "theory" that Elizabeth was the maternal aunt of Mary.

If one assumes that is accurate, then the symmetry is as good as the symmetry in Brontë's Wuthering Heights. 

The symmetry:

• Elizabeth is the maternal aunt of Mary, mother of Jesus; and,
• John the Baptist is the maternal uncle of Jesus.

Another bit of trivia with regard to The Winter's Tale. The play was already written and staged in Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare pretty much took the earlier play and re-staged it with minimal changes, something Shakespeare almost never did. There, however, was one big change, and I've seen no one comment on it yet (although I've read few analyses / critiques of the play, so I assume others have also noticed.)

The one big change that Shakespeare made: In the original play, Pandosto: Triumph of Time, by Robert Greene, there were two kings, the king of Bohemia and the king of Sicily. In Greene's play, the King of Bohemia was the "gad guy" and the source of the family's tragedy. 

Shakespeare would stage the play for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, the real Perdita. But there's no way Shakespeare could stage the play for Elizabeth, with her father being the "bad guy."

So, Shakespeare simply reversed the characters' roles, making Elizabeth's father, the king of Bohemia as the "good guy" and the king of Sicily the bad guy. 

All's well that ends well. LOL.