Discussion Question #2

[Madison]

William Shakespeare

Does this play have anything in common with fairy tales? If so, how does Shakespeare put his own twist on the genre?

[Linda R,]

When a good writer rewrites a shorter story by another good writer they can improve, deepen or even change the focus of the story by adding a new character.

You see this is movies taken from short stories. Billy Wilder did this with Agatha Christie’s story the Witness for the Prosecution, and Welles and Brandt did the same with Elmore Leonard’s story 3:10 to Yuma. When Shakespeare rewrote the story from Boccaccio’s The Decameron, he added a new character also, Parolles who alters the trajectory of the story.

In the Decameron story of Giletta and Beltramo the theme of the story rests on the cleverness of the heroine. She is given a seemingly impossible task by the hero, to gain his family ring and birth his sons without his compliance, and she out smarts him by tricking him out of both. The Bocaccio story ends with …”and from that day on, always honoring her as his bride and wife, he loved her and held her most dear.” The ending is a happy one.

In Shakespeare’s rendition a character is added. Parolles is a fake, who Count Bertram thinks is a great soldier because he keeps his uniform clean and talks a good talk, but at the first opportunity he betrays his comrades to the enemy. Count Bertram is shown to be easily fooled in his choice of friends.

This changes the thrust of the story from “look how clever the heroine is”, to “look how foolish the hero is.” Instead of a happily ever after ending Shakespeare has us question whether deceit is a good foundation for a marriage.

The King says "All yet seems well, and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet."

How will either of them weather any mistrust or storm in the future? Will they always fall back on deceit and betrayal? Do the Ends justify the means says All’s Well That End’s Well.

[Madison]

Do you think the changes Shakespeare made make the story more or less interesting?

I think I might enjoy the play more if it was about praising the woman's abilities and less about how stupid a man is. That's probably a very 21st century view.

[Linda R,]

Giletta and Beltramo is about 7 pages long all in narration and All's Well That Ends Well is 5 Acts and has the characters speak to us directly. Plus I had to read Boccaccio in translation
https://archive.org/stream/storiesboc...

so I cannot really compare the language of the two writers. But Shakespeare is, after all, the greatest writer of the English language and Boccaccio is often not even listed among the writers of the Western Canon, instead Dante is.

So yes, Shakespeare is a better writer than Boccaccio and Alls Well That Ends Well is a better story than Giletta and Beltramo. It's like comparing apples to raisins.

[Madison]

I wonder if people in Shakespeare's time believed that Helena would be happy for the rest of her life. Today's audience wouldn't believe it. We're much to cynical to believe Bertram will do an abrupt 180 and become the perfect husband. We don't trust fairy tale endings any more.