Read Winter's Tale

 

Read Pandosto

 

Comparisons

 

Essay by P.G. Thomas

 

Shakespeare's Sources

 

Happy Endings

 

Learn More

We all know in this day and age that nothing is original. Even one of the greatest creative minds of all time, William Shakespeare, borrowed from / adapted / robbed (depending on your semantics) literature he’d encountered during his schooling and throughout his life. His first play, The Comedy of Errors, was based on The Menaechmi of Plautus. From then on, he borrowed from sources ancient and contemporary, English, French, Italian, Greek, fantastical or historical. This fact doesn’t discredit his work in the least because, of course, everybody does it and always has. The part I take issue with is that, in The Winter’s Tale, which is based on Robert Greene’s story Pandosto, he took a perfectly terrible tragic ending and altered it so that everyone lives "happily ever after." But, as you will see here, everyone does that, too.

 

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