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Re: The coast of bohemia*

By: orda in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Fri, 21 Oct 11 10:08 PM | 54 view(s)
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Msg. 06098 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 06092 by Cactus Flower)

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Quite possibly. De Vere liked to pun on his name.

Vere (in Norse: to be) …or not to be. Vere or not Vere, that is the question.

VERdant = Green(e)





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Re: The coast of bohemia*
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Fri, 21 Oct 11 5:08 PM
Msg. 06092 of 54959

"The seacoast of Bohemia
Bohemian lands under Ottokar II

Shakespeare's fellow playwright Ben Jonson ridiculed the presence in the play of a seacoast and a desert in Bohemia, since the kingdom of Bohemia (which roughly corresponds to the modern-day Czech Republic) had neither a coast (being landlocked) nor a desert.[21][22] Shakespeare followed his source (Robert Greene's Pandosto) in giving Bohemia a coast, though he switched the location of people and events between Sicily and Bohemia.[23] In Support of Greene and Shakespeare, it has been pointed out that in the 13th century under Ottokar II of Bohemia the kingdom of Bohemia did stretch to the Adriatic, and it was, in fact, possible to sail from a kingdom of Sicily to the seacoast of Bohemia.[24] Moreover, in Shakespeare's time, Rudolph, king of Bohemia, also was Holy Roman Emperor and ruled over the Adriatic coast neighbouring the Venetian Republic, a fact noted by some Oxfordian scholars [See: authorship], who find it significant that the Earl of Oxford was travelling in the Adriatic region during this brief span of time. Jonathan Bate offers the simple explanation that the court of King James was politically allied with that of Rudolph, and the characters and dramatic roles of the rulers of Sicily and Bohemia were reversed for reasons of political sensitivity. Indeed, had not Shakespeare made this departure from his sources the play's performance at the wedding celebrations of Princess Elizabeth, a future queen of Bohemia, could not have taken place.[25]

In 1891, Edmund O. von Lippmann pointed out that "Bohemia" was also a rare name for Apulia in southern Italy.[26] However, Apulia was at this time a province of the Kingdom of Sicily. More influential was Thomas Hanmer's 1744 argument that Bohemia is a printed error for Bithynia, an ancient nation in Asia Minor;[27] this theory was adopted in Charles Kean's influential 19th century production of the play, which featured a resplendent Bythinian court. At the time of the Kingdom of Sicily, however, Bithynia was long extinct and its territories were controlled by the Byzantine Empire.

The pastoral genre is not known for precise verisimilitude, and, like the assortment of mixed references to ancient religion and contemporary religious figures and customs, this possible inaccuracy may have been included to underscore the play's fantastical and chimeric quality. As Andrew Gurr puts it, Bohemia may have been given a seacoast "to flout geographical realism, and to underline the unreality of place in the play".[28]

Another theory explaining the existence of the seacoast in Bohemia is suggested in Shakespeare's chosen title of the play. A winter's tale is something associated with parents telling children stories of legends around a fireside: by using this title, it implies to the audience that these details should not be taken too seriously."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale

Introduction to Pandosto

http://books.google.com/books?id=jea2AAAAIAAJ&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=robert+greene+pandosto+the+coast+of+bohemia&source=bl&ots=y_barIp794&sig=yZPsr1E0mwE6NJq38sdtGTx4i_Y&hl=en&ei=5nShTqetI8fiiAKB7vxi&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Does this mean Oxenford was also Robert Greene? Smile


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