This analysis looks at the similarities between Shakespeare's play "Cymbeline" and George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books and tries to find out if Martin has been influenced by Shakespeare's play and if the fantasy genre has been influenced by Shakespeare's romances in general.
Fans and scholars have long argued if "Game of Thrones" has been inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. Especially Macbeth is mentioned quite often, though Othello, Hamlet and King Lear are also mentioned from time to time. However, something that rarely comes up are the so-called "romances", the plays (presumably) from Shakespeare’s last period. This might not seem odd, since the romances themselves are quite difficult to categorize in Shakespeare's body of work. But when one looks at them, some similarities to the fantasy genre spring to the eye. There are wicked kings and queens, magic, apparitions of gods and fairy-tale-like figures, battles, fights, and much more that nowadays seems to be stereotypical of fantasy fiction. Since "A Song of Ice and Fire" uses many of these stereotypes, it can be seen as prototypical for the high fantasy genre.
Table of contents
1 Introduction
2 William Shakespeare: The genre of the romances and the play Cymbeline
3 The fantasy genre, exemplified by George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire
4 The influence of Cymbeline in A Song of Ice and Fire
5 Conclusion
List of references
1 Introduction
In an online forum a member going by the nickname ‘AlbertTheSamurai’ asks the online community if they agree if “Game of Thrones is greatly inspired by Shakespeare”. He wonders
whether George R. R. Martin coincedentally made many of his characters like those found in Shakespeare plays (especially the Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet plays) or whether he specifically drew inspiration from these plays and decided that throwing them all together would make a kick-ass fantasy.
At last he asks:
Is Game of Thrones perhaps one of the best creations inspired by Shakespeare's huge and completely crazy cast of characters to ever be created, or are these connections merely coincedental, nothing more than proff that no new story is completely original anymore, but just an interesting remix of existing conventions? (2013)
AlbertTheSamurai is not the only one trying to find connections between Shakespeare’s works and the famous book series A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones ) by George R. R. Martin. On the website of the publisher “Barnes & Noble”, blogger Kelly Anderson confronts some characters from A Song of Ice and Fire with their Shakespearean counterparts to see who would win a fight.
There is a whole website on the internet called “History behind Game of Thrones”, on which the historical background of certain events and characters of the series are highlighted. Since Shakespeare had been highly influenced by history, he and his works and their influence on Martin are also a side-aspect in some articles. It seems that there are a lot of scholars (and non-scholars) wondering if Martin has been influenced by Shakespeare or has even based some of his characters or plot lines on Shakespeare’s works. Especially Macbeth appears quite often, though Othello, Hamlet and King Lear are also mentioned from time to time. However, something that rarely comes up are the so-called ‘romances’, the plays (presumably) from Shakespeare’s last period. On first glance this might not seem odd, since the romances themselves are quite difficult to categorize in Shakespeare’s body of work. But when one looks at them, some similarities to the fantasy genre spring to the eye. There are wicked kings and queens, magic, apparitions of gods and fairy-tale-like figures, battles, fights, and much more that nowadays seems to be stereotypical of fantasy fiction. Since A Song of Ice and Fire uses many of these stereotypes, it can be seen as prototypical for the high fantasy genre. As for the romances it is more difficult to pick up one certain play that represents them, but I have chosen Cymbeline for that, as it includes at least all of the features that are attributed to the romances.
To find out the similarities, I will first of all give a short overview about both, the play and the book series, and then I will put my attention to the most important, or rather most obvious, connections. Due to the size of the paper, I will not focus on language and style, but they are not really comparable anyway and therefore not that important, as Shakespeare wrote poetry and Martin uses prose in his work. The books of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series are the source in this paper, there is no inclusion of the TV series. One could easily include theatre and film adaptations from Cymbeline and compare them to scenes from the TV series, but this would be the topic for another term paper. Or even a bachelor or master thesis, if one takes into account all the mentioned aspects and Shakespeare plays that A Song of Ice and Fire is compared with. But this paper will only focus on the similarities between Cymbeline and A Song of Ice and Fire and tries to find out if Martin has been influenced by Shakespeare’s play and if the fantasy genre has been influenced by Shakespeare’s romances in general.
2 William Shakespeare: The genre of the romances and the play Cymbeline
The ‘romances’ is a name “given to the plays of Shakespeare’s final period”, consisting of “ Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest and perhaps The Two Noble Kinsmen. ” It is hard to define them in comparison to the history plays, the comedies and the tragedies. Still, “they have certain common characteristics”, as “they are tragic-comedies”, have “a few comic figures” and “the only memorable characters are the heroines” (Halliday 1964: 419).
Alison Thorne (2003: 1) sees a connection between the four plays
owing to their mutual reliance on a set of readily identifiable thematic motifs and structural devices: the loss and recovery of royal children; flawed rulers, who, after enduring many years of hardship, find redemption through the restitution of their families; miraculous twists of fate, reunions and resurrections of characters presumed dead engineered by some divine agency, providential force or mage-like figure.
She adds that “on the other hand, the action of these same plays is replete with incidents to bizarre, fantastical and uncanny as to evade rational exegesis.”
The play Cymbeline was most likely written in “1609-10” (Nosworthy 2004: xv) and it was definitely performed in 1611 at the Globe Theatre. As for sources, Shakespeare “was indebted to Holinshed’s Chronicles ”, a history chronicle including “a confused account of a reign so uneventful” of “Cymbeline, […] king in 33 B.C”, who “was brought up in Rome and was absolved, by Augustus Caesar, of obligation to pay tribute.” Following that, “the Romans were twice defeated in pitched battles”, but Holinshed points out “that Latin sources claimed ultimate victory for the Romans” (Nosworthy 2004: xvii f.). In their Annals of English Drama Harbage & Wagonheim define Cymbeline as a “Tragicomedy” (1989: 101). Alison Thorne (2003: 2) describes Cymbeline as “a play with no recognisable tragic protagonists, and deaths that are represented in a comically grotesque vein.”
The story of Cymbeline is hard to tell in a few sentences. Cymbeline himself is “King of Britain”, his daughter “Imogen […] has secretly married Posthumus.” Cymbeline’s wife, “who wishes her son, Cloten, to marry Imogen” finds out and therefore “Posthumus is banished” and flees to Rome, where he “makes a wager with Iachimo that Imogen is incorruptible”. When Iachimo visits Imogen, he “gains access to Imogen’s bedroom while she is asleep, and obtains evidence which convinces Posthumus of her unchastity.” Posthumus writes Imogen a letter “to meet him at Milford Haven” and is “ordering his servant Pisanio to kill her on the way.” Pisanio disobeys, persuading Imogen to “disguise herself as a man, and to join Lucius, the Roman general, who is invading Britain.” On her way she “meets Belarius, a banished lord, and her two brothers, the sons of Cymbeline, whom Belarius stole as babes, and has brought up in his mountain cave.” When Cloten, who searches for Imogen, meets them, he “is killed by them” and “Imogen, feeling ill, takes a drug which gives her the appearance of death, and she is left beside the headless body of Cloten whom she mistakes for Posthumus”, when she awakes. She is found by Lucius, “but in the ensuing battle the Romans are defeated, largely owing to the courageous action of Belarius, the sons of Cymbeline, and Posthumus who has returned.” In the end, “all are brought before Cymbeline, and the recognition scene follows” (Halliday 1964: 125 f.).
Nosworthy (2004: xvi) thinks that “ Cymbeline has sufficient points of contact with Anthony and Cleopatra on the one hand, and with Pericles and The Winter’s Tale on the other, for it to be certain that all these plays belong to one fairly narrow area of Shakespeare chronology” and admits the so-called romances share “indisputable similarities of style, matter, characterization, and outlook, but like all generalizations, it must not be trusted over far” and that “it serves only to narrow down the range of the inquiry, and does not, in itself, settle individual dating problems.”
One can see that the romances are difficult to narrow down. In the romances, Shakespeare revises “his earlier experiments with generic form […] inasmuch as they appear to recapitulate, subsume and thereby transcend all his previous foray into the comic, tragic and historical modes” (Thorne 2003: 3). Leaving with this statement, I will go into detail on the problems and criticism on Shakespeare’s romances and especially Cymbeline later on in the conclusion.
3 The fantasy genre, exemplified by George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire
One could fill books about the definition of the genre of fantasy. Trying to pin it down to its features, it would look like this (taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica/Britannica Academic):
fantasy , also spelled phantasy, imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural beings). Examples include William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Science fiction can be seen as a form of fantasy, but the terms are not interchangeable, as science fiction usually is set in the future and is based on some aspect of science or technology, while fantasy is set in an imaginary world and features the magic of mythical beings.
One of the main aspects of fantasy – or ‘high fantasy’ to be correct (although defining all the different subgenres of fantasy would be too much for this paper) – is the “heartening stretching of the imagination”, in which “the novelist has the right to create worlds, as well as characters” (cf. “novel” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica/Britannica Academic). These world that “may take place in other worlds or times” feature “beings, places, and events that could never occur in real life.” The characters “may have magical powers and may include witches and wizards, elves, fairies, giants, dragons, monsters, talking animals, talking toys, or other supernatural or unnatural beings.” Another important trademark is that “many works of fantasy relate a struggle between the forces of good and evil” and that “often, the characters need to undertake a difficult quest or journey.” Although written in the Kids & Student Encyclopaedia, this rough definition gives all the important aspects. It goes on to say that “among the many notable contemporary works of fantasy are […] George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods ” and that “fantasy is also a popular genre of television and film, and many fantasy books have been adapted for the screen.” Martin is already mentioned here and the adaptation for the screen is also something important when it comes to his series.
A Song of Ice and Fire is an ongoing series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, having been published since 1996 and having been turned into a successful TV series by HBO. Up to now, there have been five books of the series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons1. The series has been produced since 20102 and has run since 2011. Each season covers one of Martin’s books and since it has begun “with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,”” (Fleming 2007) the series has been known under this name rather than A Song of Ice and Fire.
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1 cf. Martin’s website: http://www.georgerrmartin.com/book-category/?cat=song-of-ice-and-fire
2 http://grrm.livejournal.com/164794.html