Finished: A Winter's Tale (Shakespeare). I'm on a Shakespeare kick! :-) As usual, I liked Shakespeare's prose, and I liked a few of the characters. It just always drives me crazy how quick some characters are to jump to conclusions, especially kings! And, of course, the erroneous conclusions always lead to tragedy heaped upon tragedy. A Winter's Tale was no different. Leontes, the king of Sicily, is happily married to Hermione with a young son and a baby on the way. He outrageously gets it into his head that Hermione has been unfaithful to him with his best friend, and near brother, Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. He plots to murder Polixenes, accuses and imprisons his wife, proclaims that the baby must be theirs, listens to no one's pleadings, and starts the downward spiral of tragedy. Camillo, the faithful servant of Leontes, betrays him and does not poison Polixenes. Instead, he helps Polixenes escape back to his own land and family. Leontes does send for an oracle from the gods to make 100% sure he is correct. Meanwhile, before the oracle arrives, Hermione gives birth to a healthy baby girl, but Leontes has the baby sent out to a faraway desert and left to die. The young prince, just a small boy, so distraught at his mother's imprisonment, takes ill and dies. When Hermione hears this news, she collapses and dies as well. Just then, the oracle arrives proclaiming that the queen was not unfaithful and that the baby, Perdita, is the king's daughter and heir.

Meanwhile, the faraway desert just happens to be Bohemia. A shepherd finds the baby Perdita and raises her as his daughter. Time goes by....Sixteen years later Perdita is a beautiful young woman and in love with none other than Florizel, the son of Polixenes!! When Polixenes finds out his son is wooing a mere shepherd's daughter, he forbids them to see each other again. They decide to run away. Camillo, who came to work for Polixenes years ago when he helped him escape, decides to help the couple escape....and he sends them to Sicily! He knows that Polixenes will insist on following them and Camillo selfishly longs to go back to his homeland. Sooooo, everyone ends up back in Sicily, and all is discovered. Perdita, the long lost daughter of Leontes, is declared alive. By the way, Leontes has been repenting every day for sixteen years, so everyone forgives his actions from before. Perdita and Florizel get married...Leontes and Polixenes reunite as friends and....the statue made to the likeness of Hermione suddenly comes to life! Hermione is alive! Was she alive and hidden by her lady in waiting all those years? Or, did some kind of goddess magic happen? I guess we'll never know. But, they all lived happily ever after. Well, except for the tiny little prince. :-(

As usual, some favorite lines. When Camillo is trying to convince Polixenes to hurry along and flee for his life, Polixenes questions how Leontes could possibly think he'd have an affair with his wife:

Polixenes: How should this grow?

Camillo: I know not: but I am sure 'tis safer to avoid what's grown than question how 'tis born. 

When Leontes is yelling at his man-servant for not standing up to his wife, who has berated the king for how he has treated the queen, he threatens to hang his man, Antigonus:

Leontes: And, thou are worthy to be hang'd, that will not stay her tongue.

Antigonus: Hang all the husbands that cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself hardly one subject. 

Hee hee, I like that. :-)

When Perdita was apprehensive about Florizel's father finding out about her and not approving, Florizel comforted her with words that rivaled Romeo...almost:

Florizel: Apprehend nothing but jollity. The gods themselves, 
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter 
Became a bull, and bellow'd; the green Neptune 
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-rob'd god, 
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain, 
As I seem now. Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires
Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts
Burn hotter than my faith.

Then, when Florizel is telling Camillo that he would give up inheriting the kingdom to be with Perdita he says:

From my succession wipe me, father; I am heir to my affection.

Love that! :-) ok...so I think one more Shakespeare and then I've got to move on to an author I haven't read before!