Pyramus and Thisbē

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

----------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramus_and_Thisbe

<<Pyramus and Thisbē are a pair of ill-fated lovers whose story forms part of Ovid's 's Metamorphoses. The story has since been retold by many authors.

In the Ovidian version, Pyramus and Thisbe is the story of two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupy connected houses/walls, forbidden by their parents to be wed, because of their parents' rivalry. Through a crack in one of the walls, they whisper their love for each other. They arrange to meet near Ninus' tomb under a mulberry tree and state their feelings for each other. Thisbe arrives first, but upon seeing a lioness with a mouth bloody from a recent kill, she flees, leaving behind her veils. When Pyramus arrives he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's veil, assuming that a fierce beast had killed her. Pyramus kills himself, falling on his sword in proper Roman fashion, and in turn splashing blood on the white mulberry leaves. Pyramus' blood stains the white mulberry fruits, turning them dark. Thisbe returns, eager to tell Pyramus what had happened to her, but she finds Pyramus' dead body under the shade of the mulberry tree. Thisbe, after a brief period of mourning, stabs herself with the same sword. In the end, the gods listen to Thisbe's lament, and forever change the colour of the mulberry fruits into the stained colour to honour the forbidden love.

. Alas what chaunce, my Pyramus, hath parted thee and mee?
. Make aunswere O my Pyramus: it is thy Thisb', even shee
. Whome thou doste love most heartely, that speaketh unto thee.
. Give eare and rayse thy heavie heade. He hearing Thisbes name,
. Lift up his dying eyes and having seene hir closde the same.
. But when she knew hir mantle there and saw his scabberd lie
. Without the swoorde: Unhappy man thy love hath made thee die:
. Thy love (she said) hath made thee sley thy selfe. This hand of mine
. Is strong inough to doe the like. My love no lesse than thine
. Shall give me force to worke my wound. I will pursue the dead.
. And wretched woman as I am, it shall of me be sed
. That like as of thy death I was the only cause and blame,
. So am I thy companion eke and partner in the same,
. For death which only coulde alas asunder part us twaine,
. Shall never so diss[EVER US] but we will meete againe.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in Giovanni Boccaccio's On Famous Women as biography number twelve (sometimes thirteen) and in his Decameron, in the fifth story on the seventh day, where a desperate housewife falls in love with her neighbor, and communicates with him through a crack in the wall, attracting his attention by dropping pieces of stone and straw through the crack.

Geoffrey Chaucer was among the first to tell the story in English with his The Legend of Good Women. John Gower also uses the story, with some alteration, as a cautionary tale in his Confessio Amantis, while Amoryus and Cleopes is a 15th-century version.

In Shakespeare's appears in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act V, sc 1), a group of "mechanicals" enact the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe". Their production is crude and, for the most part, badly done until the final monologues of Nick Bottom, as Pyramus and Francis Flute, as Thisbe. The theme of forbidden love is also present in A Midsummer Night's Dream (albeit a less tragic and dark representation) in that a girl, Hermia, is not able to marry the man she loves, Lysander, because her father Egeus despises him and wishes for her to marry Demetrius, and meanwhile Hermia and Lysander are confident, Helena, is in love with Demetrius.

The "Pyramus and Thisbe" plot also appears in Romeo and Juliet, in which the titular characters, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, fall in love at a party the Capulet family hosts, but they cannot be together because the two families hold "an ancient grudge" (which the young lovers' deaths eventually quash), and because Juliet has been engaged by her parents to a man named Paris. Shakespeare drew this aspect of Romeo and Juliet from his main source Arthur Brooke's play The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.

Spanish poet Luis de Góngora wrote a Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe in 1618. French poet Théophile de Viau wrote Les amours tragiques de Pyrame et Thisbée, a tragedy in five acts (1621).

Edmond Rostand adapted the tale from Romeo and Juliet, making the fathers of the lovers conspire to bring their children together by pretending to forbid their love, in Les Romanesques, whose musical adaptation, Fantasticks, became the world's longest-running musical.

There is a chapter entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe" in Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, alluding to the secret romance between Maximillian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort.

In Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Merchant's Tale' from The Canterbury Tales, the two illicit lovers Damian and May are likened to Pyramus and Thisbe for their forbidden love.

In Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, during his "nose monologue", Cyrano mocks his "traitorous nose" in "parody of weeping Pyramus."

In Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, two of the story's lovers are killed under a Mulberry Tree.

In Don Quixote, when Cardenio is relating the story of he and Luscinda, he refers to "that famous Thisbe.">>
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Art Neuendorffer

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2013 11:13:23 -0700 (PDT), Arthur Neuendorffer
<acne...@gmail.com> wrote:

>----------------------------------------------------
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramus_and_Thisbe
>

><<Pyramus and Thisb? are a pair of ill-fated lovers whose story forms part of Ovid's 's Metamorphoses. The story has since been retold by many authors.

>
>In the Ovidian version, Pyramus and Thisbe is the story of two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupy connected houses/walls, forbidden by their parents to be wed, because of their parents' rivalry. Through a crack in one of the walls, they whisper their love for each other. They arrange to meet near Ninus' tomb under a mulberry tree and state their feelings for each other. Thisbe arrives first, but upon seeing a lioness with a mouth bloody from a recent kill, she flees, leaving behind her veils. When Pyramus arrives he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's veil, assuming that a fierce beast had killed her. Pyramus kills himself, falling on his sword in proper Roman fashion, and in turn splashing blood on the white mulberry leaves. Pyramus' blood stains the white mulberry fruits, turning them dark. Thisbe returns, eager to tell Pyramus what had happened to her, but she finds Pyramus' dead body under the shade of the mulberry tree. Thisbe, after a brief period of mourning, stabs
>herself with the same sword. In the end, the gods listen to Thisbe's lament, and forever change the colour of the mulberry fruits into the stained colour to honour the forbidden love.
>
>. Alas what chaunce, my Pyramus, hath parted thee and mee?
>. Make aunswere O my Pyramus: it is thy Thisb', even shee
>. Whome thou doste love most heartely, that speaketh unto thee.
>. Give eare and rayse thy heavie heade. He hearing Thisbes name,
>. Lift up his dying eyes and having seene hir closde the same.
>. But when she knew hir mantle there and saw his scabberd lie
>. Without the swoorde: Unhappy man thy love hath made thee die:
>. Thy love (she said) hath made thee sley thy selfe. This hand of mine
>. Is strong inough to doe the like. My love no lesse than thine
>. Shall give me force to worke my wound. I will pursue the dead.
>. And wretched woman as I am, it shall of me be sed
>. That like as of thy death I was the only cause and blame,
>. So am I thy companion eke and partner in the same,
>. For death which only coulde alas asunder part us twaine,
>. Shall never so diss[EVER US] but we will meete againe.
>
>The story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in Giovanni Boccaccio's On Famous Women as biography number twelve (sometimes thirteen) and in his Decameron, in the fifth story on the seventh day, where a desperate housewife falls in love with her neighbor, and communicates with him through a crack in the wall, attracting his attention by dropping pieces of stone and straw through the crack.
>Geoffrey Chaucer was among the first to tell the story in English with his The Legend of Good Women. John Gower also uses the story, with some alteration, as a cautionary tale in his Confessio Amantis, while Amoryus and Cleopes is a 15th-century version.
>In Shakespeare's appears in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act V, sc 1), a group of "mechanicals" enact the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe". Their production is crude and, for the most part, badly done until the final monologues of Nick Bottom, as Pyramus and Francis Flute, as Thisbe. The theme of forbidden love is also present in A Midsummer Night's Dream (albeit a less tragic and dark representation) in that a girl, Hermia, is not able to marry the man she loves, Lysander, because her father Egeus despises him and wishes for her to marry Demetrius, and meanwhile Hermia and Lysander are confident, Helena, is in love with Demetrius.
>The "Pyramus and Thisbe" plot also appears in Romeo and Juliet, in which the titular characters, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, fall in love at a party the Capulet family hosts, but they cannot be together because the two families hold "an ancient grudge" (which the young lovers' deaths eventually quash), and because Juliet has been engaged by her parents to a man named Paris. Shakespeare drew this aspect of Romeo and Juliet from his main source Arthur Brooke's play The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.
>

(snip)

The "West Side Story" plot works okay for me, but I don't think much
of the "canned corn" sort of conclusion, where the star-crossed lovers
kill themselves sort of mechanically. Seems like more could have been
done showing character faults in the fatal design.

Aristotle wants the defect in the hero to show up, as I understand it.
"True love" formula," as spelled out in folklore reveals faults in its
antagonists, what the "wall" is, as well as prevails, usually?

But I like RJ as another of Shakespeare's delineations of a kind of
evil. bookburn