THE WINTER'S TALE
CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH GREENE'S 'PANDOSTO' AND THE 'ALKESTIS' OF EURIPIDES
I
SHAKESPEARE'S INDEBTEDNESS TO GREENE
The story of 'Pandosto' falls into two distinct divisions; first, the story of Pandosto and Bellaria; second, the story of Dorastus and Fawnia. Compare each of these two stories with the two stories interwoven in the play, noting all the analogous passages and the use Shakespeare has made of them. (For Greene's 'Pandosto' or 'History of Dorastus and Fawnia' see 'Shakespeare's Library,' or pp. 118-125 and Notes in First Folio Edition.)
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION
Do Shakespeare's borrowed and additional archaisms and his confusion of names and places show carelessness? Is his continuation of the story merely a playwright's device to join the two parts of the plot and make a good stage piece end happily? (As to Coast of Bohemia see Poet Lore, April, 1894), also in "First Folio Edition," pp. 176-177.
II
THE RESEMBLANCES TO THE 'ALKESTIS' OF EURIPIDES
In Greene and in Shakespeare the King wishes the Queen's death because he is uncomfortable so long as she lives, and he prefers his comfort to aught else, taking it as his conjugal right and royal prerogative. (See ii. 3, 1 and 204.) The Queen, understanding this, says, "My life stands in the level of your dreams, which I'll lay down." To her she says, "can life be no commodity" when love, "the crown and comfort of her life," is gone. So Alkestis (see any translation of Euripides, in Bohn edition, literal prose translation, vol. i. p. 223) says she "was not willing to live bereft" of Admetos, therefore she did not spare herself to die for him, "though possessing the gifts of bloomy youth wherein" she "delighted." This point of correspondence may have occurred to Shakespeare and suggested his continuation of Greene's novel. Admetos' image of his wife, that he would have made by the cunning hands of artists, is possibly a prototype of the statue of the Queen in 'The Winter's Tale,' the piece "newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano." Compare also, Herakles' trial of Admetos with Paulina's trial of Leontes (v. i); and Herakles' restoration of the unknown Alkestis to her husband with Paulina's bringing the statue of the Queen to life.