Comparing Jealousy In Pandosto And Like The Winter's Tale

Shakespeare takes a story with a jealous man’s life ending in suicide and creates a new story of renewal, rebirth and forgiveness. Robert Greene 's Pandosto is about King Pandosto 's transpiring jealousy over his wife Bellaria 's presumed love affair with his lifelong friend, Egisthus. Shakespeare 's ability to adopt and manipulate the narrative show his creativeness in choosing sources and having somehow merging them into his own original work. Pandosto is originally darker than the Winter’s Tale. Shakespeare changed characters names and altered the tone of the play. I believe that Shakespeare took Pandosto as a foundation for what he wanted to “build”. He wanted to get a different point across at the ending and throughout the play. He

Like The Winter 's Tale 's Camillo, Pandosto 's cupbearer Franion flees off to Sicily along with Egistus, causing the King to suspect that they have been working together on getting away with the love affair between Bellaria and Egistus. Just like in Shakespeare’s play, Leontes suspects Camillo of helping Polixenes. Pandosto and The Winter’s Tale both give a lesson on jealousy and how it can easily get out of hand if it’s stretched out far enough. As stated earlier, The Winter’s Tale gives off more of a happy ending, showing that Leontes did not completely run out of chances to repent and rekindle what was lost. By using this source, Shakespeare might have been trying to give an updated version of the story, given that Pandosto was released at least 50 years prior to The Winter’s Tale. In giving Leontes a chance with his wife again, Shakespeare teaches a “new age” thought of never giving up. In my perspective, it also brings religion into the picture. In Christianity, it is taught that you may only be forgiven if you repent. We see how remorseful Leontes was for the next 16 years after losing his family. After acknowledging all his wrong-doings and actually having a change of heart at last, life gives him a chance to be forgiven, even though he doesn’t get everything back that he lost like his son Mamillius. Bellaria 's and Garinter 's death provided Shakespeare with the same tragic mood to the first half of

In adopting Greene’s plot, Shakespeare may have been also exercising the fact that the young girl was innocent. Being a newborn baby when abandoned, Fawnia and Perdita both deserved to have good fortune, even if it was not money wise. Good was bound to in their direction because they are the most innocent characters in both plots. Fawnia encounters Dorastus, son of Egisthus and they end up in a relationship. I can compare that to where, in the Winter’s Tale, Perdita ends up in a relationship with Polixenes’ son Florizel. Greene 's second half focuses on the young lovers and their flight from Sicilia to Bohemia, where Pandosto imprisons Dorastus and attempts to seduce his own daughter. In both of these scenes neither king remembers their daughters face because it has been sixteen years. They haven’t seen them since they were born. This all falls under the punishments that they are receiving for their outrageous acts