The Winter's Tale: Folktale, Romance, and the Disney Film Formula

Abstract

In the fall of 2003, a Shakespeare Comedies course I taught concluded with The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest as examples of the romances. Throughout the course the students had shown an interest in the folk elements of Shakespeare’s plays appearing occasionally in some of the comedies and in great abundance in the romances. We therefore spent some time on the literary uses of folk elements and on romance traditions from the middle ages forward, and thus the students became familiar with folk motifs found often in romances, such as the fair unknown and the exile’s return. By chance, I remarked that many Disney films, notably the animated fairy-tale based ones like Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid, use many folk and romance elements, and I also suggested that our modern notion of folktale has been both sustained and skewed by popular Disney adaptations such as these. The resulting discussion of the connections between these films and Shakespearean romances was lively and instructive. And in the grand pedagogical tradition of no good deed going unpunished, I came up with a paper topic in which my students analyzed The Tempest for folk motifs it had in common with Disney’s 1989 Little Mermaid.