Pandosto
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Pandosto: The Triumph of Time is a novel written by the Englishish author Robert Greene, first published in 1588.[1] A later edition of 1607 was re-titled Dorastus and Fawnia. Popular during the time of William Shakespeare, the novel's plot was an inspiration for that of Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. Greene, in turn, may have based his novel on The Clerk's Tale, one of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer.[2]
Greene's story contains darker elements that Shakespeare lightened for his comic purposes. In Greene's tale, Pandosto, King of Bohemia, unwittingly falls in love with his daughter Fawnia; his queen, Bellaria, dies of grief when she learns of their young son's death; and at the end of the story, Pandosto commits suicide out of grief for the troubles he caused his family. Shakespeare reversed the two kingdoms of Sicilia and Bohemia, added side characters like Paulina and Antigonus, and introduced Autolycus the Clown.
Shakespeare was not the only playwright to adapt Pandosto; the French dramatist Alexander Hardy produced his own version, titled Pandoste, around 1625. Hardy's play has not survived, though sketches of its scenery by Laurent Mahelot still exist. Mahelot's stage design followed the principle of "multiple setting," or décor simultané, in which a single stage set served for all of a play's scenes.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Literary Encyclopedia entry for Pandosto
- ^ Thomas H. McNeal, "The Clerk's Tale as a Possible Source for Pandosto," Papers of the Modern Language Association Vol. 47 No. 2 (June 1932), pp. 453-60.
- ^ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; pp. 328, 352.
