The plot of Robert Greene’s prose romance ‘Pandosto: The Triumph of Time’ is said to be the inspiration for which Shakespeare play?
Pandosto Pandosto Pandosto: The Triumph of Time is a prose romance written by the English author Robert Greene, first published in 1588. A later edition of 1607 was re-titled "Dorastus and Fawnia". Popular during the time of William Shakespeare, the work's plot was an inspiration for that of Shakespeare's play "The Winter's Tale". Greene, in turn, may have based the work on "The Clerk's Tale", one of "The Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer. Edward Chaney suggested that Robert Greene when writing "Pandosto" may have had in mind the Earl of Oxford's suspicions about the paternity of his daughter (granddaughter of Lord Burghley)
The Winter's Tale the last scene's coup de théâtre involving the statue, creates a distinctive thematic divergence from "Pandosto". Greene follows the usual ethos of Hellenistic romance, in which the return of a lost prince or princess restores order and provides a sense of humour and closure that evokes Providence's control. Shakespeare, by contrast, sets in the foreground the restoration of the older, indeed aged, generation, in the reunion of Leontes and Hermione. Leontes not only lives, but seems to insist on the happy ending of the play. It has been suggested that the use of a pastoral romance from the 1590s indicates