Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about Shakespeare.
I am a huge fan of Shakespeare and his works - his play on words is a joy and when you get a decent production of one of his shows it is an evening very well spent. He's also renowned or reputed for having famously created several words and phrases that we still use today.
I was therefore rather surprised to find that he did not come up with the stories for his plays. While this might obvious for his histories, even his classic romantic tragedy, Romeo & Juliet, was basically a rip-off of an earlier work. In fact, every single one of his plays is based on another earlier work. I have compiled a basic list of these (barring subplots for the majority) to demonstrate where the credit for his plots, at least, should perhaps be directed.
Title |
Source |
|
All's Well That Ends Well |
Based on the tale of Giletta di Narbona from Boccaccio's The
Decameron. |
|
Based
on Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives. |
|
|
Based on Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie, written 1586–87 and first published in 1590. This, in turn, is based
upon "The Tale of Gamelyn". |
|
|
Based on Menaechmi by
Plautus. |
|
|
Based on the "Life of Coriolanus" in Thomas
North's translation of Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble
Grecians and Romans (1579). |
|
|
Based on the story of the historical British
king Cunobeline in the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles
and The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. |
|
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Based on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles and Jean Froissart's Chronicles. |
|
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Based on the legend of Amleth retold by the
16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. May also have drawn on a (now lost) play known as the Ur-Hamlet. |
|
|
Based on the second edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles
& Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of
Lancaster and York. |
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Based on the second edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles
& Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of
Lancaster and York. |
|
|
Based on the second edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles
& Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of
Lancaster and York. An earlier play, the Famous Victories of
Henry V is also believed to have been a model. |
|
|
Based on Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and
Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548) and the second
edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland
and Ireland. |
|
|
Based on Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and
Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548) and the second
edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland
and Ireland. |
|
|
Based on Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and
Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548) and the second
edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland
and Ireland. There are sufficient differences between Hall and Holinshed
to establish that Shakespeare consulted both. |
|
|
Based on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. |
|
|
Based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives.
Shakespeare deviated from historical facts to curtail time. |
|
|
Based on the play The Troublesome
Reign of King John (c.1589).
Possibly also based on John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Matthew
Paris' Historia Maior, and the Latin Wakefield Chronicle.
|
|
|
Based on the second edition (1587) of Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (which contains
a character named Cordelia who also dies from hanging) and Philip Sidney's Countess
of Pembroke's Arcadia which features a blind king and his two sons). |
|
|
Theoretically based on a now lost account of a diplomatic
visit made to Henry of Navarre in 1578 by Catherine de Medici and
her daughter, Henry's estranged wife, to discuss the future of Aquitaine. Possibly based on the early plays of John Lyly, Robert Wilson's The
Cobbler's Prophecy and Pierre de la Primaudaye's L'Academie
française. |
|
|
Based on the Daemonologie of King James detailing
the famous North Berwick Witch Trials of 1590. Also based on Holinshed's Chronicles or George Buchanan's Rerum
Scoticarum Historia. |
|
|
Based on "The Story of Epitia" from Cinthio's Gli
Hecatommithi and George
Whetstone's 1578 Promos and Cassandra. |
|
|
Based on Il Pecorone by Giovanni Fiorentino
and the forfeit of a merchant's deadly bond after standing surety
for a friend's loan which was a common tale in England in the late 16th
century. Elements of the trial scene are based on The Orator by Alexandre
Sylvane and the story of the three caskets is based on Gesta Romanorum. |
|
|
Based on Il Pecorone, a collection of stories by
Ser Giovanni Fiorentino included in William Painter's The
Palace of Pleasure. |
|
|
Based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, Chaucer's "The
Knight's Tale", Aristophanes' The Birds and Der Busant.
|
|
|
Based on the Novelle ("Tales")
by Matteo Bandello of Mantua and/or Orlando Furioso by Ludovico
Ariosto. Stories of lovers deceived into believing each other false
were common currency in northern Italy in the sixteenth century. |
|
|
Based on Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" from Gli
Hecatommithi (1565). |
|
|
Based on Confessio Amantis by John Gower and the Lawrence
Twine prose version of The Pattern of Painful Adventures. |
|
|
Based on the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles
of England, Scotlande, and Irelande & Edward Hall's The Union
of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York. |
|
|
Based on Holinshed's
Chronicles, the writings of John
Rous, Polydore Vergil and Thomas More. |
|
|
Based on Arthur Brooke’s The
Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, a
translation of Giulietta e Romeo originally created by Luigi da Porto - in turn inspired by Mariotto and Ganozza by Masuccio
Salernitano. |
|
|
Based on tale 44 of Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor
y de Patronio by Don Juan Manuel, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey
Chaucer and also oral tradition (the 'Shrew-taming Complex' in the Aarne–Thompson
classification system). Subplot based on Ludovico Ariosto's I Suppositi. |
|
|
Based on passages from "Naufragium" in Erasmus's Colloquia
Familiaria, Peter Martyr's De orbo novo, William Strachey's A
True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight |
|
|
Based on the twenty-eighth novella of William Painter's Palace
of Pleasure, Plutarch's Lives, perhaps Lucian's Dialogues
and a lost comedy on the subject of Timon. |
|
|
Based on Gesta Romanorum, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Seneca's Thyestes, Livy's Ab urbe condita
and Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus. |
|
|
Based on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, John Lydgate's Troy
Book and Caxton's translation of the Recuyell of the
Historyes of Troye. |
|
|
Based on the Italian production Gl'ingannati by
the Accademia degli Intronati and "Of Apollonius and
Silla", in Barnabe Riche's 1581 collection. |
|
|
Based Los Siete Libros de la Diana by Jorge de
Montemayor, Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named the Governour and John
Lyly's Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit. |
|
|
Based on "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. |
|
|
Based on Robert Greene's Pandosto. |
However, rather than be devastated by this news, I chose to view it from the positive and from that angle there are 2 very clear points to be seen:
1) It demonstrates the importance of not falling victim to hero worship (especially without all the facts).
2) It provides us with a chance to explore the sources that inspired the Bard.
In the end, it could even be said, rather than diminishing him, to serve to make him even more relatable, more human, even more like us, which is, after all, one of his most enduring qualities and one believed to be one of the main reasons the prolific work of the son of Warwickshire glover is still perused, pored over and performed over 400 years after his death.
