After rereading Hermione's trial scene from The Winter's Tale, I tried to apply my focus (Germanic) to it. It was hard. I read that scene in German, and didn't learn anything new (that applied to the play, I did notice some very interesting things about the text of the play, but that is more historical linguistics, and probably uninteresting to anyone but myself)
Then I started researching the history of this play in Germany. In addition to finding the following clip, of a fun student version of the play from the Universität Bielefeld,
Angriff des Bären aus Shakespeares Wintermärchen
Compagnie Charivari | Myspace Video
I also found that German poets and authors have taken Shakespeare's big mistake with this play, the geography of Bohemia, and made it their own, by adding more meaning to it. There are several poems and stories titled, Böhmen liegt am Meer, or Bohemia on the sea, where they use this image as a representation of an ideal Utopia, of a place they would like to know exists, though in reality it is not what it purports to be. Just as we know that there are no coasts in Bohemia, but we accept that because it makes the play better, Germans describe a life they wish could be, even when they know it can never happen.
That is just so fascinating to me, that Germans care so much about Shakespeare to find meaning even in his mistakes and to take that meaning and make it deep, intellectual and philosophical.
