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The Winter's Tale 8705 Views
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Description:
The Winter's Tale is like the Disney movie of Shakespeare plays—if you ignore all the murders, mauling, and love-children, anyway.
Transcript
- 00:01
The Winter’s Tale, a la Shmoop. Shakespeare sure likes to mix things up. Take
- 00:09
his play, The Winter’s Tale.
- 00:11
It’s set in faraway lands with castles, lovers and magic. Sounds like a romance fit
- 00:17
for Disney, right?
- 00:19
Wrong, because then our playwright literally tries to kill babies.
Full Transcript
- 00:24
It begs the question, is this a happy romance or a dark tragedy? Or did Shakespeare visit
- 00:28
the apothecary one too many times? Let’s study the facts.
- 00:31
Kings and queen in a beautiful castle. Romance!
- 00:35
King tries to murder best friend and throws very pregnant wife in the slammer because
- 00:40
he thinks they’re having a love-child. Tragedy. A princess is born. Romance!
- 00:46
Actually… Have you tried to give birth in a jail cell without an epidural? We’re going
- 00:51
to say tragedy. Then, like a bad episode of Maury, the king
- 00:54
won’t admit he’s the baby daddy.
- 00:56
And he orders the baby killed.
- 00:59
And the kid prince dies from despair over his mom.
- 01:03
But maybe it’s a good thing he dies? Who wants a fragile mama’s boy to be the future
- 01:07
king?
- 01:08
Wait, no, not a good thing. Because the queen drops dead. Bummer.
- 01:12
Although… the King’s servant doesn’t actually kill the baby, and instead leaves
- 01:19
her in a faraway land to be raised by a funny shepherd and his clown-friend. Romance!
- 01:25
Then the servant gets eaten by a bear.
- 01:27
That’s right. Eaten. On stage. By a live bear. Tragedy.
- 01:36
Time passes, and the pretty princess wins the sheep sheering festival’s beauty pageant.
- 01:40
She’s even dating a prince. Sigh.
- 01:43
Not so fast. The prince’s father… the king’s ex-best friend, awkward… thinks
- 01:49
she’s just a country bumpkin and threatens to disfigure her. Double awkward.
- 01:54
Back at the castle, the king is sad. It’s hard murdering your entire family.
- 01:59
But sure enough, the Shepherd and clown-man come with documents and prove the princess
- 02:03
is alive. And so, a perfectly logical ending occurs
- 02:07
where…
- 02:07
The king is reunited with his best bud.
- 02:10
The princess and prince are allowed to get married.
- 02:13
Everyone visits a statue of the dead queen.
- 02:16
Which then comes alive!
- 02:18
And they all live happily ever after. Perhaps we’ll never know Shakespeare’s
- 02:22
intentions.
- 02:23
But at least it all ends up right as rain in the end.
- 02:26
Except for the king’s servant and son, who are still very much dead.
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