Friday, April 01, 2005

The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale 1586

Shakespeare's last comedy, alluding to events of 1584-6, especially concerned with Raleigh's plan for colonization of Virginia. Bohemia, seacoast of Bohemia is Virginia. Perdita is abandoned on a strange and barren coast.
Reference to Elizabeth's plan for doing away with the Queen of Scots before her trial and execution.
Archaic use of the word "fardel", meaning bundle or burden.
Fardell was Sir Walter Raliegh's birthplace.
Polixenes represents Leicester.
Sir Richard Greenville captured a ship full of pearls.
The price of wool is from before the war began in 1586.
Reference to a clock belongining to Babington, after his goods were confiscated.
Camillo is Drake.
Phesant family of Gray's inn, circa 1582
Tobacco came back with Ralph Lane in 1586, and became popular in a few years, but there is no reference to it in the plays, even ones supposedly dated to the Jacobean era, when tobacco became controversial.

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