We
talked the other day about how Shakespeare's Hamlet was based off another that
really had the exact same plot. So we know that he is not above lifting - or
should I say borrowing? - ideas from others. So I was just looking up some
articles and information about "The Winter's Tale" and it turns out
that he did much the same here! So I was looking at a couple different sources
(the links are included below) and they all mention aspects taken from other
works. Some of it seems to have been piecemeal like, "A dance of satyrs in Act 4 (4.4.340–1) [which] seems
to be borrowed from Ben Jonson's Masque of Oberon (Oxford
Reference)," or the "number of minor debts
to Plutarch ...principally characters' names (Oxford
Reference)", etc. Other things are larger, like the plot itself. As one
article I read said, "Shakespeare also used Robert Greene’s Pandosto:
The Triumph of Time (published in 1588) as a source material,"
which included "borrowing from it the dual setting of Bohemia and Sicilia,
a jealous king, and an heir lost and restored (scholarworks)." It
really is so interesting how much he drew on other material, and it just makes
me wonder to what extent that is allowed and accepted today, especially with
all the emphasis on plagiarism. Either way, though, I still believe the
Shakespeare earned the place he has today in literary history.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1968&context=theses
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198117353.001.0001/acref-9780198117353-e-3078?rskey=KEtgLA&result=3104
That's really interesting! One of my English classes right now is discussing how there are roughly 7 main plot types from which all plots sort of stem from. So I get why some of Shakespeare's plots borrow from his contemporaries... But I don't quite know where the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism is. Perhaps he's paying homage to those works, much in the same way that people take his plays and write spinoffs today?
ReplyDeleteI agree, this is really interesting. One thing that frustrates me about Shakespeare sometimes is that I feel like so many questions about the "why" if what he chose go unanswered. We can analyse texts and know that he borrowed and copied and pasted, but what I really want to know is why he chose to do that in his work.
ReplyDeleteI think that his stuff was a lot like our historical fiction genre that we have today. Today, there are many books written about historical events with created characters and sort of made up plots to explain why something happened the way it did. The only difference is that our historical fiction writers do a ton of research and site what they find in order to avoid plagiarism. In Shakespeare's time, it was also kind of a new thing to write and get things printed, so although these histories and stories where out there, it is more likely that they were more verbal at the time so he may have been one of the first to write, print, or have these ideas performed. It also seems like plagiarizing wasn't such a big deal back then because things were so verbal that it was normal to have a story told several times and in many different ways, so Shakespeare probably wasn't doing anything socially non-acceptable.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call it plagiarism, because Shakespeare didn't simply steal the work of others and try to pass it off as his own. He borrowed the ideas and then used his own style to create his own play. From what I understand, this wasn't frowned on back then, and it's still somewhat accepted today. I'm in a Creative Writing class right now, and something we've been talking about is how to imitate the style of other writers while still making it our own. My professor actively encourages looking at other writers and trying to imitate what they did, not to plagiarize their work but to learn from it.
ReplyDelete