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The Winter's Tale is an excellent example of a novel turned into a play. That practice was common in Elizabethan times as in recent years; but with this difference, that the drama in Shakespeare's time was usually an improvement on the novel and in our own day is usually a popularized degradation of the original. The novel—or novelette, for it can be read in an hour—from which Shakespeare drew most of the plot of his Winter's Tale was Pandosto: the Triumph of Time (or The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia), which first appeared in 1588 and was a 'best-seller' for years before Shakespeare dramatized it. At least fourteen editions of it are known to have been issued. Its author was Robert Greene, a brilliant and unfortunate author, who died near the beginning of Shakespeare's career, and died bitterly jealous of that transforming genius which was already giving hints of the masterpieces it could make from other men's crude materials.

In Greene's novel Pandosto, king of Bohemia, with his wife Bellaria entertains as his guest his old friend Egistus, king of Sicilia. Pandosto, like Leontes, becomes jealous, but more slowly and with more reason, for Bellaria, though pure, is imprudent. Franion, his cup-bearer, promises murder and escapes, as does Camillo. Bellaria, like Hermione, is accused, cleared by the oracle, and actually—not apparently—dies on learning the death of her son Garinter. Her little daughter Fawnia is abandoned on the coast of Sicilia, brought up by a shepherd, and loved by Prince Dorastus of that country. Capnio, a faithful old servant of Dorastus, aids the young