Page:Winter's Tale (1918) Yale.djvu/141

The Winter's Tale lovers in their flight, as does Camillo, and brings the shepherd and 'fardel' aboard Dorastus' ship as does Shakespeare's Autolycus. The reception of the lovers at the court of Pandosto and the discovery of Fawnia's identity run closely parallel to the same events in the play, save that Pandosto, before learning Fawnia's parentage, conceives an incestuous love for his own daughter. After Fawnia's marriage Pandosto, grown melancholy with brooding over his sins against those whom he loved best, kills himself.

Shakespeare in recasting Greene's material omitted as too tragic and brutal the incestuous passion and violent death of Pandosto, and threw out as impertinent several paragraphs dealing with the life of the old shepherd. He created the characters of Antigonus, Paulina, and Autolycus, and combined the parts of Franion and Capnio in that of Camillo. He created the statue scene which ends the play, and the scene between Perdita and Polixenes (IV. iv.), for which there were no hints in the prose tale. By interchanging throughout the parts of Bohemia and Sicily he probably meant to veil the extent of his debt to a book that was still popular, although he may have believed that the suddenness of Leontes' jealousy would seem truer to life in a hot-blooded Sicilian than in a native of Central Europe. As is almost inevitable when changing a novel into a play, the action is made more rapid. For example, in the second scene of Act First events which in Greene's novel covered several weeks are made to happen in a single hour. The greatest change, however, and the greatest improvement, is in the conception of character, which throughout is more noble and subtle in Shakespeare than in his forerunner.

The closeness of Shakespeare at times to his original can be shown by comparing Hermione's defence (III. ii. 23–117) with the corresponding speech of Bellaria: