Universität Paderborn
Hauptseminar: William Shakespeare
WS 2000/2001

Robert Greene′s Pandosto. 

The Triumph of Time.

by

Daniela Esser

11. Semester 

Table of contents

Quotation 3

1 Introduction 4-5

2 Elizabethan prose fiction and Robert Greene 5-7

3 Pandosto - an interpretation 8-20
3.1 The title 8-9
3.2 The story of Pandosto and Bellaria 9-11
3.3 The story of Dorastus and Fawnia 12-17
3.4 Greene′s world picture in Pandosto: Time and Fortune 17-20

4 Conclusion 20-21

Bibliography 22

Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft, die mit Eifer Leiden schafft.

(German proverb)

Mangelndes Vertrauen ist nicht das Ergebnis von Schwierigkeiten. Sie haben ihren Ursprung in mangelndem Vertrauen.

(Seneca)

1 Introduction

Robert Greene was one of the most popular English prose writers of the late 16^th century and Shakespeare′s most successful predecessor in blank-verse romantic comedy. He was also one of the first professional writers and among the earliest English autobiographers¹. His early prose works show the influence of John Lyly and the Euphuistic style.²

His novella Pandosto. The Triumph of time³ (first extant edition 1588) is a prose pastoral romance based on Greek tradition that provided Shakespeare with the plot of The Winter′s Tale. The running title of the romance, however, is "The History of Dorastus and Fawnia". The happy love story of Dorastus and Fawnia is framed by the tragic story of the jealous Pandosto, king of Bohemia, and his wife Bellaria. Pandosto′s jealousy is based on a misunderstanding and leads to the abandonment of his child Fawnia and to the death of his beloved wife Bellaria. Pandosto′s life is therefore determined by grief, and he cannot even find his daughter. Fawnia, however, is found by a shepherd and is raised by him as if it was his child. As time goes by, the son of Egistus, king of Sicilia, falls in love with the shepherdess Fawnia who turns out to be a lost princess. So this love story ends happily, and as Greene already claims in the title, truth may be concealed yet time brings the truth to light: "Temporis filia veritas" - truth is the daughter of time.⁴ With this structural arrangement, the second (happy) generation, namely Dorastus and Fawnia, is framed within the story of the first (unhappy) generation.⁵

With his depiction of two worlds that have fortune as their main agent, Greene proposes a world picture which was opposed to that of the prevailing moral. Pandosto is also less didactic than the fiction of contemporary authors.⁶ The fusion of pastoral and Greek romance assured Pandosto a great popularity over one and a half centuries.⁷

2. Elizabethan prose fiction and Robert Greene

In the Elizabethan period, fiction underwent far-reaching changes.⁸ A rapid social development which also comprised the increasing literacy among Elizabethans as well as a growing publishing industry provided the stimulus for an "[...] expansion of the popular literary audience [...]."⁹ The growing audience then also included "[...] non-elite men and women who read print for pleasure"¹⁰, which consequently led to an increasing diversity of the literary audience. The diversity of the literary audience results in the Elizabethan period′s considerable output of prose fiction. So the general social and industrial changes also implied the cultural changes. In brief, the Elizabethan period was a time of rapid social as well as literary development.Thus, prose fiction was subject to significant changes. There was an enormous increase in the production of prose fiction and an expansion of vernacular printed books.¹¹ Accordingly, a great variety of fiction titles became available to the growing audience.

According to Salzman, "[...] it would be misleading to see Elizabethan fiction as a completely hermetic series of different genres."¹² As Elizabethan authors liked to mix various genres, the formerly elite works, that is to say the courtly works, influenced the popular works and vice-versa. For that reason, the different kinds of narrative began to merge. It is this combination of narrative types that is the basis for the liveliness of late sixteenth century fiction.

Especially the romance form underwent "various metamorphoses".¹³ According to Salzman, those changes can be traced in the work of Robert Greene and in Sir Philip Sidney′s Arcadia.¹⁴ Many writers in the Elizabethan age dedicated themselves to the exploration of a style suitable for narrative.¹⁵ That is also the reason why the style of the early modern prose narratives often seems pompous from the point of view of today′s readers. Furthermore, Elizabethan writers tended to avoid the realism that by the previous generation was believed to be the nature of the novel.¹⁶ It will be explored later how Greene made use of literary fashions in Pandosto and which themes and motifs he applied.

Yet another important aspect is that "Elizabethan authors did not share the post-Romantic obsession with originality [...]."¹⁷ A lot of narratives were based on the plots of older stories. Thus Elizabethan writers varied stories which were already known beforehand. This is another case in point for the argument that structure and language mattered more than the plot itself. In order to explain the Elizabethan preoccupation with the narrative mode, Salzman uses the theory of Russian Formalism¹⁸. Formalist critics concentrated on the distinction between fabula and sujet, "[...] often labelled today `story′ and `discourse′."¹⁹ This distinction is also applicable to Elizabethan fiction, while the discourse was of greater significance. Salzman concludes that Elizabethan prose fiction explores the different modes of telling a story:

[...]

1 Greene′s last work, The repentance of Robert Greene (1592), is totally autobiographical. See Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 183.

2 See Salzman, Paul: English Prose Fiction 1558 - 1700. A critical history. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. p. 59.

3 This paper is based on the edition given in Shakespeare, William: The Winter′s Tale. Ed. J. H. P. Pafford. The Arden Shakespeare. Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1999. Hereafter cited as Pafford (ed.), The Winter′s Tale. As Pafford points out, the text is "that of the edition of 1595, in modernized spelling and punctuation, collated with the editions of 1588 and 1592." See p. 181.

4 See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 399.

5 See Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: " `Social Things`: The production of popular culture in the reception of Robert Greene′s Pandosto." ELH 4/1994, p. 757.

6 See Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 167.

7 See Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: "The Triumph of Time: The fortunate readers of Robert Greene′s Pandosto." Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England. Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (eds.). London: Macmillan, 1997.

8 See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. vii.

9 Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: " `Social Things`: The production of popular culture in the reception of Robert Greene′s Pandosto." ELH 4/1994, p. 753.

10 Ibid.

11 See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. x.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. vii/viii.

14 An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. viii.

15 See ibid., p. ix.

16 See ibid.

17 Ibid., p. xi.

18 See The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Chris Baldick New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 195f.

19 An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xi.