Charlotte Artese’s new anthology complements her early book, Shakespeare's Folktale Sources. That 2015 volume argues that the playwright used folklore as a source for at least seven plays: The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline. Her new publication is an anthology that provides variants of tales used in many of these plays, as well as cognate versions of tales that are related to A Comedy of Errors, King Lear, and The Tempest. She provides an overall introduction and also introductions to specific plays as she shows the importance of folktales as sources for Shakespeare's literary creations. Artese provides a good presentation of tale types, and the volume likely results from the extensive research she has completed on the Elizabethan bard.
One strength of this anthology is the author’s demonstration that Shakespeare was influenced by a variety of folktales, evident even within a single play. In discussing The Taming of the Shrew, Artese shows that he likely drew from folkloric sources including the ballad "The Frolicksome Duke: Or, The Tinker's Good Fortune" and a related tale that Rachel Harriette Busk compiled titled "The Queen and the Tripe-Seller." This same presence of multiple influences is evident in her discussion of other plays. It is especially interesting how tales such as "The Wager on the Wife's Chastity," "Snow White," and "The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers" can be read as influences on Cymbeline, the wonderful play she identifies as "Shakespeare's most magisterial combination of folktale materials" (241). Her introduction to this genre-bending problem-play masterfully illustrates why it is important to recognize how Shakespeare used folktales, and Artese offers engaging variants on the tales related to this play, compiled by Yolando Pino-Saavedra, Kurt Ranke, Italo Calvino, John Millington Synge, and other writers and folklorists. This presentation adds new insights into Elizabethan drama as well as into the subsequent use of folklore by major writers such as Calvino and Synge. This anthology of tales clearly demonstrates the importance of folkloric analogues in gaining a deeper appreciation of great but often underappreciated plays such as Cymbeline.
This domain of folklore study is made more complex when we consider folklore in Titus Andronicus. Intriguingly, Artese avoids discussing the literary merit of what many consider to be Shakespeare's worst play. Her approach is rather to show how there is a strong presence of blood, guts, gore, and misogyny within folkloric sources that clearly influenced his dramatism. It is to Artese's credit that she writes less to defend the merit of the bloodbath that is Titus Andronicus and more to provide context for its creation and reception. Elizabethan audiences would have been exposed to folklore and literature that included such gruesome elements, and Artese reminds us how this violence in writing is complicit with blood sports and attending public executions as spectacle within Elizabethan culture. Artese does not fully elevate the play's reputation, but she does show it is a bit more than a sixteenth-century slasher drama, by referencing sources that include Ovid's story of Philomela and a variety of revenge stories.
Artese's emphasis is on bringing together an interesting collection of tales, and she provides a wide variety of texts. This anthology includes tale variants that show up in collections by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Svend Grundtvig, Aleksandr Afanas'ev, Dov Noy, Giambattista Basile, Zora Neale Hurston, and other major compilers of folklore. The bibliographic information provides useful contexts for ascertaining when the tales were documented, but readers also need to recognize that many of these narratives were not put into print until centuries after the Elizabethan era had ended. Although it is interesting to recognize how the stories exhibit temporal continuity into the present, more specific references to historic-geographic studies of particular tale types and motifs would be have been helpful. Artese does make use of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale-type index to show how the plays can be understood in relation to key tale types. She also references Thompson's motif index, but she offers only limited identification of motifs that appear in the plays.
This omission becomes a problem as readers observe how Shakespeare's use of a folkloric motif often is central to a plot. Overlooking the importance of motifs is clearly evident in her treatment of The Tempest. Linking the plot to the tale-type of The Magic Flight (ATU 313) has merit, but her analysis would be more convincing if she had related this element of the play's plot to the recurring motif—or "function" in Propp's terminology—that is so integral to genres such as the Märchen. Other motifs, such as those found in section H 900-999 Assignment and Performance of Tasks, are more precise ways of denoting relevant plot elements that she describes as a tale type. Unfortunately, Artese simply overlooks many of these motifs even though they are integral to the play. The anthology's sparse bibliography would also benefit from the inclusion of newer motif and tale-type indexes that include a wider variety of cultural groups.
These limitations aside, Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology of Stories can serve as an excellent resource for teaching Shakespeare's plays. Rather than thinking of folklore as local color used to embellish plots, Artese demonstrates how folklore was often central to Shakespeare's literary creativity, and her scholarship is a welcome addition to literary studies. This book also is a good resource for teaching courses in folklore, as there is sufficient variation in the texts to demonstrate the value of comparative studies of folklore. Thinking about folkloric influences in literary history is an excellent way to revitalize and further develop approaches used in the historic-geographic method. Artese's range of tales will be useful for thematically based studies of folklore, and also a resource illustrating the intrinsic value of the stories.
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[Review length: 968 words • Review posted on February 4, 2021]