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Pyramus and Thisbe
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For other uses of both "Pyramus" and "Thisbe", see Pyramus (disambiguation) and Thisbe (disambiguation).
Thisbe, by John William Waterhouse, 1909.
Pyramus and Thisbē are a pair of ill-fated lovers whose story forms part of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The story has since been retold by many authors.
Contents
[hide]
1 Plot
2 Origins
3 Adaptations
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
6.1 Primary sources
6.2 Secondary sources
7 External links
Plot[edit]
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pyramus and Thisbe are 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 veil. When Pyramus arrives he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's veil, assuming that a wild beast has killed her. Pyramus kills himself, falling on his sword in proper Babylonian 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.
Origins[edit]
Ovid's is the oldest surviving version of the story, published in 8 AD, but he adapted an existing etiological myth. While in Ovid's telling Pyramus and Thisbe lived in Babylon and Ctesias had placed the tomb of his imagined king Ninus near that city, the myth probably originated in Cilicia (part of Ninus' Babylonian empire) as Pyramos is the historical Greek name of the local Ceyhan River. The metamorphosis in the primary story involves Pyramus changing into this river and Thisbe into a nearby spring. A 2nd-century mosaic unearthed near Nea Paphos on Cyprus depicts this older version of the myth.[1]
Adaptations[edit]
Pyramus and Thisbe by Gregorio Pagani. Uffizi Gallery.
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in Giovanni Boccaccio's On Famous Women as biography number twelve (sometimes thirteen)[2] 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.
In the 1380s, Geoffrey Chaucer, in his The Legend of Good Women, and John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis, were the first to tell the story in English. Gower altered the story somewhat into a cautionary tale. John Metham's Amoryus and Cleopes (1449) is another early English adaptation.
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ultimately sprang from Ovid's story. Here the star-crossed lovers cannot be together because Juliet has been engaged by her parents to another man and the two families hold an ancient grudge. As in Pyramus and Thisbe, the mistaken belief in one lover's death leads to consecutive suicides. The earliest version of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1476 by Masuccio Salernitano, while it mostly obtained its present form when written down in 1524 by Luigi da Porto. Salernitano and Da Porto both are thought to have been inspired by Ovid and Boccaccio's writing.[3] Shakespeare's most famous 1590s adaptation is a dramatization of Arthur Brooke's 1562 poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, itself a translation of a French translation of Da Porto's novella.
In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act V, sc 1), written in the 1590s, 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 that Helena is in love with Demetrius.
Spanish poet Luis de Góngora wrote a Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe in 1618, while French poet Théophile de Viau wrote Les amours tragiques de Pyrame et Thisbée, a tragedy in five acts, in 1621.
In 1718 Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello wrote his only opera "La Tisbe" for Württemberg court. François Francoeur and François Rebel composed Pirame et Thisbée, a lyric tragedy in 5 acts and a prologue, with libretto by Jean-Louis-Ignace de La Serre; it was played at the Académie royale de musique, on October 17, 1726. The story was adapted by John Frederick Lampe as a "Mock Opera" in 1745, containing a singing "Wall" which was described as "the most musical partition that was ever heard."[4] In 1768 in Vienna, Johann Adolph Hasse composed a serious opera on the tale, titled Piramo e Tisbe.
Edmond Rostand adapted the tale, making the fathers of the lovers conspire to bring their children together by pretending to forbid their love, in Les Romanesques,[citation needed] whose musical adaptation, Fantasticks, became the world's longest-running musical.
See also[edit]
Star-crossed
Pyramus and Thisbe Club, a UK organisation concerned with party wall legislation
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Miller, John F.; Newlands, Carole E. (2014). A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid. John Wiley & Sons. p. 38-39. ISBN 1118876121.
Jump up ^ Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, pp. 27-30; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9
Jump up ^ Prunster, Nicole (2000). Romeo and Juliet Before Shakespeare: Four Early Stories of Star-crossed Love. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. ISBN 0772720150.
Jump up ^ Recorded on Hyperion Records, CDA66759
References[edit]
Primary sources[edit]
Ovid, Metamorphoses iv.55-166
Secondary sources[edit]
Bulfinch, Thomas, The Age of Fable; Or, Stories of Gods and Heroes (2nd ed.), Sanborn, Carter, and Bazin, 1856
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pyramus and Thisbe.
Pyramus and Thisbe performed by The Beatles
Carlos Parada, Greek Mythology link: Pyramus and Thisbe
pXt A visual novel adaptation of the story from A Midsummer Night's Dream
[show]
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William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Characters
Romeo
Juliet
Mercutio
Tybalt
Benvolio
Friar Laurence
Nurse
Paris
Rosaline
Queen Mab
Atomy
Sources
The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
Pyramus and Thisbe
Palace of Pleasure
Troilus and Criseyde
Ballets
Romeo and Juliet (1938, Prokofiev)
Romeo and Juliet (1962, Cranko)
Romeo and Juliet (1965, MacMillan)
Romeo and Juliet (1977, Nureyev)
Romeo and Juliet (1965, Lavery)
Radio and Juliet (2005)
Romeo + Juliet (2007, Martins)
Romeo and Juliet (2008, Pastor)
Operas
Romeo und Julie (1776, Benda)
Giulietta e Romeo (1796, Zingarelli)
Giulietta e Romeo (1825, Vaccai)
I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830, Bellini)
Gloria (1874, Cilea)
Roméo et Juliette (1867, Gounod)
A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907, Delius)
Romeo und Julia (1940, Sutermeister)
Musicals
The Belle of Mayfair (1906)
West Side Story (1957)
Once on This Island (1990)
Roméo et Juliette, de la Haine à l'Amour (2001)
Giulietta e Romeo (2007)
Classical
Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1 (c. 1800)
Roméo et Juliette (1839, Berlioz)
Romeo and Juliet (1870, Tchaikovsky)
On screen
1900
1908
1916 Metro Pictures
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1936
1953
1954
1955
1964
1968
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Film
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English
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953)
Romanoff and Juliet (1961)
West Side Story (1961)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Lonesome Cowboys (1968)
Romie-0 and Julie-8 (TV; 1979)
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (1982)
Valley Girl (1983)
Bullies (1986)
China Girl (1987)
Romeo.Juliet (1990)
Tromeo and Juliet (1996)
Love Is All There Is (1996)
Rose by Any Other Name... (1997)
The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns (1999)
Romeo Must Die (2000)
Brooklyn Babylon (2001)
Pizza My Heart (TV; 2005)
West Bank Story (2005)
Life and Lyrics (2006)
Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss (2006)
Rome & Jewel (2006)
David & Fatima (2008)
The Cross Road (2008)
Vicious Circle (2008)
Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)
Private Romeo (2011)
Warm Bodies (2013)
Make Your Move (2013)
Romeo & Juliet (2013)
Hindi
Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981)
Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988)
Saudagar (1991)
Kuch Tum Kaho Kuch Hum Kahein (2002)
Bollywood Queen (2002)
Ishaqzaade (2012)
Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013)
Issaq (2013)
Telugu
Maro Charitra (1978)
Akkada Ammayi Ikkada Abbayi (1996)
Kalisundam Raa (2000)
Maro Charitra (2010)
Spanish
Romeo and Juliet (1940)
Los Tarantos (1963)
30:e november (Swedish/Spanish 1995)
Amar te duele (2002)
Italian
Fury of Johnny Kid (1967)
Ma che musica maestro (1971)
Portuguese
Mônica e Cebolinha: No Mundo de Romeu e Julieta (1979)
O Casamento de Romeu e Julieta (2005)
Other
Ambikapathy (Tamil 1937)
Les amants de Vérone (French 1949)
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Czech 1960)
The Phantom Lover (Mandarin 1995)
Chicken Rice War (Cantonese/English 2000)
Ondagona Baa (Kannada 2003)
Mamay (Ukrainian 2003)
The District! (Hungarian 2004)
In Fair Palestine: A Story of Romeo and Juliet (2006)
The Bubble (Hebrew/Arabic 2006)
Priyatama (Marathi 2014)
Arshinagar (Bengali 2015)
Eeda (Malayalam 2017)
The Sea Prince and the Fire Child (Japanese 1981)
TV series
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Family and Friends (1990)
Villa Quintana (1995)
Yo amo a Paquita Gallego (1998)
Skin (2003)
A Touch Away (2006)
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Romeo × Juliet (2007)
Romeo y Julieta (2007)
Saints & Sinners (2007)
Harina de otro costal (2010)
Villa Quintana (2013)
Westside (2013 pilot)
Star-Crossed (2014)
Still Star-Crossed (2017)
Plays
Romanoff and Juliet (1956)
Romeo and Juliet (2013)
Songs
Lan và Điệp (1930s)
"Montagues and Capulets" (1935)
"Fever" (1956)
Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (1968)
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (1976)
"Angelo" (1978)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1978)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1981)
"Cherish" (1989)
"Amor Prohibido" (1994)
"Kissing You" (1996)
"Exit Music" (1997)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1998)
"Starcrossed" (2004)
"Peut-être toi" (2006)
"Mademoiselle Juliette" (2007)
"Love Story" (2008)
"Love Me Again"
"Laal Ishq"
"Mor Bani Thanghat Kare"
"Nagada Sang Dhol"
"Ram Chahe Leela" (2013)
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Les Chouans
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The Stolen Dormouse (1941)
The Faraway Lurs (1963)
Romiette and Julio (2001)
New Moon (2006)
Warm Bodies (2010)
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Romeo and Juliet: the Tomb Scene (1790)
Romeo and Juliet (1978)
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William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
Characters
Lovers
Theseus and Hippolyta
Oberon and Titania
Hermia and Lysander
Helena and Demetrius
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Nick Bottom
Peter Quince
Francis Flute
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A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962)
The Dream (1964)
Opera
The Fairy-Queen (1692)
Pyramus and Thisbe (1745)
Puck (1949)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960, opera)
The Enchanted Island (2011)
Film adaptations
Wood Love (1925)
Dream of a Summer Night (1983)
Get Over It (2001)
A Midsummer Night's Rave (2002)
Midsummer Dream (2005)
Were the World Mine (2008)
Strange Magic (2015)
Other adaptations
The Triumph of Beauty (1646)
St. John's Eve (1852)
"Fascination" (1994)
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A Midsummer Night's Gene (1997)
A Midsummer's Nightmare (1997)
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A Midsummer Night's Dream (1842, Mendelssohn)
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Three Shakespeare Songs (1951)
Symphony No. 8 (1992, Henze)
Il Sogno (2004)
Art
Hermia and Lysander
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania
Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Related
The Sandman: Dream Country (1991)
Pyramus and Thisbe
Mechanical
Love-in-idleness
The Apartment (1996)
Wicker Park (2004)
[show]
v
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"Pyramus and Thisbe" from Ovid's Metamorphoses
Operas
Pirame et Thisbé (1726 Francoeur and Rebel)
Pyramus and Thisbe (1745 Lampe)
Piramo e Tisbe (1768 Hasse)
Other
"Amoryus and Cleopes" (poem)
Related
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Romeo and Juliet
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