The Winter's Tale

I've just finished reading The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare. First up, it's not very wintery. No snowfall, no snowmen, no mittens, no winter wonderland. That aside, it was another good read, as per usual.

As for oddities, the one curio was that it portrayed Bohemia as having a coastline.

".. our ship hath touch'd upon the deserts of Bohemia?"

This has apparently been a bone of contention over the years. With some people arguing it was a simple matter of ignorance, and others coming up with all manner of theories to spare Shakespeare his blushes.

Ignorance fits with my own view of Shakespeare. Namely that later generations elevated and curated Shakespeare into some sort of high-culture intellectual (who simply couldn't have made such an error). Whereas in reality he was more a commoner sort of genius. Brilliant, but well capable of mistakes. Think our modern rock stars. I'm sure there are mistakes, born of ignorance, in Beatles songs. Most would agree that Lennon & McCartney are songwriting geniuses, but by the same token we know they're human enough to occasionally get their geography or history wrong.

The other theories (you can get an overview from the Wikipedia page for The Winter's Tale) are interesting, but they tend towards wishful thinking.

It's also tempting to go down the really revisionist route and wonder if perhaps history itself is somewhat messed up. Maybe the name Bohemia referred to a different or larger area back then, with it being common knowledge that that particular place had a coastline. Though Ben Jonson, the playwright who was a contemporary of Shakespeare, supposedly ridiculed Shakespeare for the mistake. So to go down that route would require some serious rewiring of history.

It's also worth noting that Shakespeare copied the plotline from Robert Greene's work Pandosto. According to the Wikipedia page Greene also gave Bohemia a coastline. However, Shakespeare flipped the story around. The tale is set in Sicily and Bohemia: In Greene's it's the Bohemian king that accuses his wife of infidelity, whereas in Shakespeare's it's the Sicilian.

I haven't read Greene's work (perhaps I should), so I don't quite know the details. However, it may be that it's the flipping around of roles that's given rise to the error. Obviously you can arrive on the coast of Sicily, it being an island. So that would work. At the end they then sail back to Bohemia (back to Sicily in Shakespeare's), but you can travel to somewhere landlocked via sea, it just implies a further land leg of the journey too. So it would make sense providing you don't state it's the actual coastline of the country that your characters are alighting upon, as Shakespeare does.

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*Update: I've began reading Greene's work Pandosto. I'm about a third of the way through. I'm not enjoying it as much as The Winter's Tale, but then again I have heard it before.

Anyway, this work does too paint Bohemia as having coast.

".. provided a navy of ships and sailed into Bohemia to visit his old friend .."

Then later:

"Egistus [..] with the help of Franion conveyed himself and his men out of a postern gate of the city so secretly and speedily that without any suspicion they got to the sea-shore, where, with many a bitter curse taking their leave of Bohemia, they went aboard. Weighing their anchors and hoisting sail .."

So the flipping around is not the cause. Shakespeare copied the error (if indeed it was an error), he didn't originate it.