Editing The Winter's Tale (section)

==== The seacoast of Bohemia ====
[[File:Gelett Burgess - Map of Bohemia 1896.jpg|thumb|A fanciful 1896 map by [[Gelett Burgess]] showing Bohemia's seacoast]]
Shakespeare's fellow playwright [[Ben Jonson]] ridiculed the presence in the play of a seacoast and a desert in Bohemia, since the landlocked [[Kingdom of Bohemia]] (corresponding to the western part of the modern-day [[Czech Republic]]) had neither a coast nor a desert.<ref name=wylie>{{cite book |title=The Winter's Tale |editor-last= Wylie|editor-first=Laura J. |year=1912 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |oclc=2365500 |page=147 |quote=Shakespeare follows Greene in giving Bohemia a seacoast, an error that has provoked the discussion of critics from Ben Jonson on.}}</ref><ref>Ben Jonson, 'Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden', in Herford and Simpson, ed. ''Ben Jonson'', vol. 1, p. 139.</ref> Shakespeare followed his source (Robert Greene's ''Pandosto'') in giving Bohemia a coast, though he reversed the location of characters and events: "The part of Pandosto of Bohemia is taken by Leontes of Sicily, that of Egistus of Sicily by Polixenes of Bohemia".<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/dorastusfawnia00thomuoft/dorastusfawnia00thomuoft_djvu.txt Greene's 'Pandosto' or 'Dorastus and Fawnia': being the original of Shakespeare's 'Winter's tale'], P. G. Thomas, editor. Oxford University Press, 1907</ref> In support of Greene and Shakespeare, it has been pointed out that for a brief period in the 13th century, the territories ruled by [[Ottokar&nbsp;II of Bohemia]] did stretch to the Adriatic, even though Bohemia strictly speaking did not; so that if one takes "Bohemia" to mean all of the territories ruled by Ottokar II, it would have been possible to sail from Sicily to the "seacoast of Bohemia".<ref>See [[John Henry Pyle Pafford|J. H. Pafford]], ed. ''The Winter's Tale'', Arden Edition, 1962, p. 66</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Fermor|first=Patrick|title=A Time of Gifts|publisher=John Murray|year=1977|isbn=0719566959|location=London|pages=258}}</ref> Jonathan Bate offers the simple explanation that the court of [[James VI and I|King James]] was politically allied with that of [[Rudolf II]], and the characters and dramatic roles of the rulers of Sicily and Bohemia were reversed for reasons of political sensitivity, and in particular to allow it to be performed at the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth.<ref name="bate2008">{{cite book|last=Bate|first=Jonathan|author-link=Jonathan Bate|title=Soul of the Age|publisher=Viking|location=London|year=2008|page=305|chapter=Shakespeare and Jacobean Geopolitics|isbn=978-0-670-91482-1}}</ref>

In 1891, [[Edmund Oscar von Lippmann]] pointed out that "Bohemia" was also a rare name for [[Apulia]] in southern Italy.<ref>Edmund O. von Lippmann, 'Shakespeare's Ignorance?', ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=1dxAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA250 New Review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408122954/https://books.google.com/books?id=1dxAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA250 |date=8 April 2023 }}'' 4 (1891), 250–254.</ref> More influential was [[Thomas Hanmer]]'s 1744 argument that Bohemia is a printed error for [[Bithynia]], an ancient nation in [[Asia Minor]];<ref>Thomas Hanmer, ''The Works of Shakespeare'' (Oxford, 1743–44), vol. 2.</ref> this theory was adopted in [[Charles Kean]]'s influential 19th-century production of the play, which featured a resplendent Bithynian court. At the time of the medieval Kingdom of Sicily, however, Bithynia was long extinct and its territories were controlled by the Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, the play alludes to Hellenistic antiquity (e.g. the Oracle of Delphos, the names of the kings), so that the "Kingdom of Sicily" may refer to Greek Sicily, not to the Kingdom of Sicily of later medieval times. This is irreconcilably contradicted by Hermione's identity as a princess of Russia, a country that did not exist in the classical period.

The [[pastoral]] genre is not known for precise verisimilitude, and, like the assortment of mixed references to ancient religion and contemporary religious figures and customs, this possible inaccuracy may have been included to underscore the play's fantastical and chimeric quality. As [[Andrew Gurr]] puts it, Bohemia may have been given a seacoast "to flout geographical realism, and to underline the unreality of place in the play".<ref>Andrew Gurr, 'The Bear, the Statue, and Hysteria in ''The Winter's Tale'', ''Shakespeare Quarterly 34'' (1983), p. 422.</ref>

A theory explaining the existence of the seacoast in Bohemia offered by [[C. H. Herford]] is suggested in Shakespeare's chosen title of the play. A winter's tale is something associated with parents telling children stories of legends around a fireside: by using this title, it implies to the audience that these details should not be taken too seriously.<ref>See C.H. Herford, ed. ''The Winter's Tale'', The Warwick Shakespeare edition, p.xv.</ref>

[[John A. Pitcher]] argues in the [[Arden Shakespeare]] Third Series edition (2010) that the coast of Bohemia is intended as a [[joke]], akin to jokes about a "[[Swiss Navy]]".<ref>{{Cite news |date=1927-04-01 |title=Swiss Navy Joke Vanishing As This All-Fools' Day Dawns |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1927/04/01/archives/swiss-navy-joke-vanishing-as-this-allfools-day-dawns.html |access-date=2023-02-16 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=23 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211223020759/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/04/01/archives/swiss-navy-joke-vanishing-as-this-allfools-day-dawns.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the novel ''[[Prince Otto]]'' by [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] reference is made to the land of Seaboard Bohemia in the context of an obvious parody of Shakespeare's apparent liberties with geography in the play.