User:SMambs/sandbox

Instructor feedback
- suggested edits: "Iachimo's description of Imogen's room as proof of her infidelity derives from The Decameron, and Pisanio’s reluctance to kill Imogen and his use of her bloody clothes to convince Posthumus of her death derives from Frederyke of Jennen. In both sources, the equivalent to Posthumus’ bracelet is stolen pieces of jewelry that the wife later recognizes while cross-dressed. "

- "drew influence for" should be "drew inspiration for"

- should be: "two plays, including a king's daughter"

Peer Review Implementation
Shakespeare's historical basis for Cymbeline comes from the story of Cunobeline, which was originally recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, but which Shakespeare likely found in the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. Shakespeare based the setting of the play and the character Cymbeline on what he found in Holinshed's chronicles, but the plot and sub-plots of the play are derived from a series of other sources. The sub-plot of Posthumus and Iachimo's wager derives from story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and the anonymously authored Frederyke of Jennen. These share similar characters and wager terms, and both feature Iachimo's equivalent hiding in a chest in order to gather proof in Imogen’s room. Iachimo's description of Imogen's room as proof of her infidelity derives from The Decameron, and Pisanio’s reluctance to kill Imogen and his use of her bloody clothes to convince Posthumus of her death derives from Frederyke of Jennen. In both sources, the equivalent to Posthumus’ bracelet is stolen pieces of jewelry that the wife later recognizes while cross-dressed. Shakespeare also drew influence for Cymbeline from a play called The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, first performed in 1582. There are many parallels between the characters of the two plays, namely, a king's daughter who falls for a man of unknown birth who grew up in the king's court. The subplot of Belarius and the lost princes was inspired by the exiled nobleman in Rare Triumphs, Bomelio, later revealed to be the protagonist's father.

Implementation plan and drafting
We will keep the current organization of the section, including keeping it as one paragraph. However, we will try to make the different sources more clear and distinguishable from one another.

Copy of the current paragraph:
The plot of Cymbeline is based on a tale in the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and is ultimately part of the Matter of Britain, derived from the part of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth about the real-life British monarch Cunobeline. Shakespeare, however, freely adapts the legend and adds entirely original sub-plots. Iachimo's wager and subsequent hiding-place inside a chest in order to gather details of Imogen's room derive from story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron.

Marked up and edited paragraph, with only my personal changes:
The plot of Cymbeline is based on a tale in the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and is ultimately part of the Matter of Britain, derived from the part of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth about the real-life British monarch Cunobeline. Shakespeare, however, freely adapts the legend and adds entirely original sub-plots. The sub-plot of Posthumus and Iachimo's wager derives from story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and the anonymously authored Frederyke of Jennen.   These share similar characters and wager terms, and both feature Iachimo's equivalent hiding in a chest in order to gather proof in Imogen’s room. Only The Decameron uses the appearance of Innogen’s room as proof, 'while Frederyke of Jennen'' is the origin of Pisanio’s reluctance to kill Innogen and the use of blood on her clothes to convince Posthumus. In both sources the equivalent to Posthumus’ bracelet is stolen pieces of jewelry that the wife later recognizes while she lives as a man.'''

Sam B's suggestion:

I would change the sentence "These share similar characters, wager terms, and hiding in a chest in order to gather proof in Imogen’s room" to something like "These share similar characters and wager terms, and both stories feature somebody hiding within Innogen's bedchamber to gain false proof of being there." Something like this flows a little better, i think.

Sean's suggestions:

I would change the bit " while Frederyke of Jennen originates Pisanio’s reluctance" to something like "is the origin of", that way it's a more passive voice and I agree with Sam's suggestion about the flow of the previous sentence, but I think more precise language than "somebody" would be a good call

Citations to add and where:
Cymbeline intro in first wager plot sentence

Review article in first wager plot sentence

Both new primary sources in second sentence, and last sentence

Keep the two current citations in first sentence, and the Decameron specific quote for the reference to the Decameron using the appearance of the room

New sources used:
Frederyke of Jennen copy (I transcribed it in Word, can't upload that here)

Decameron transcribed online

Arden Cymbeline text

Review article

Process:
I hunted down and read some secondary sources on what sources Cymbeline's wager sub-plot reflects, and picked out the most useful one (discusses how Decameron and Frederyke are both sources) to add as a citation. I also read what was cited there previously, and have agreed that the original two sources are valuable to keep.

However, what has helped me the most in carrying out our goal of clarifying what does and does not come from Shakespeare's main sources was reading the sources themselves. I only read one section of The Decameron, which was the section that all sources agreed was the part that Shakespeare was influenced by. I did read the entirety of Frederyke, because Shakespeare likely looked at the whole thing and all of Frederyke is based on that same section of The Decameron. Since the only full copy of Frederyke I could find was just images of a book, I ended up just transcribing it all in order to understand it and be able to look back through it without having to scan through images of difficult font and unfamiliar spellings. This allowed me to directly compare these two sources and pick out what was similar or different between them: exactly what I wanted to do in order to flesh out the section. I looked for a secondary source that did this, which I could cite instead, but I didn't find one.

I tried to condense the knowledge I deemed useful down into as few sentences as possible. In the first official draft it is four sentences, which is longer than I would like. I will continue trying to chop it down while maintaining what information is valuable to someone wanting to know what inspired Shakespeare while writing Cymbeline.

I'm still unsure about the sentence referencing 'entirely original sub-plots' since I haven't found any sources discussing what Shakespeare was solely responsible for and I don't want to make unfounded claims. After further group discussion I hope to ask the talk page and get advice from more experienced editors on either what sub-plots have absolutely no connection to previous works or for the OK to remove that sentence.

After review, group member comments have been integrated and a new section on the talk page added, to ask the a broader audience what on earth to do about that weird sentence. No way to drastically shorten the addition was found.

Gregory's Suggestions:

It is great that you are able to find some additional sources for the article, but I do not think your goal should be to condense the useful information in these articles into as few sentences as possible. While it is good to be brief, I believe our goal is to capture the heart of the content in the sources we have, which is not necessarily accomplished by reducing it to as few words as possible. As for being unsure about the sentence referencing "entirely original sub-plots," it may be necessarily to simply remove this, but we can consult the talk page before doing this.

--> Thank you for your suggestion! By my count we added 2 new sources plus the two primary sources that I needed to fall back on. To clarify, nothing in the articles was condensed: it was the primary sources that I needed to drastically summarize. The one source I added actually just defends that both are in fact sources, so there's not much to summarize there. We discussed among ourselves that keeping the sources section concise was a goal, and if people are interested in the sources themselves some are important enough to have their own wiki page where people can go to read that work's synopsis. Unfortunately, Shakespeare also drew a lot from two sources that are as yet not important enough for their own page, although I was tempted to start a Frederyke one for fun. Taking Decameron and Frederyke as the example since that's what I have knowledge to speak on, it would be rather counterproductive to say every little thing about them that are in common with the plot of Cymbeline's wager business. It would pretty much be a literal step by step summary of both of the entire primary sources, on Cymbeline's wiki page. Shakespeare made the pretty words, but man he did not come up with much of the sub-plots himself. And Frederyke is just a rewrite of Decameron, so multiply that summary by two. That's why I tried to keep it to a major-points-only review of what Cym takes from them. Concerning that one sentence, if you read the final draft under "Peer Review Implementation" we have removed that sentence and hope that the cited sentence "Shakespeare based the setting of the play and the character Cymbeline on what he found in Holinshed's chronicles, but the plot and sub-plots of the play are derived from a series of other sources" is a better alternative. I also addressed the talk page about it several days ago. -SM

Updated Citations:
The text below is the completed portion of the updated references and citations sections. It will replace the outdated Notes & References section of the Cymbeline article once all of the citations have been added to these sections.

Drafting edits to Horatio (Hamlet)
Horatio is a character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. Horatio's origins are unknown, although he was present on the battlefield when Hamlet's father defeated Fortinbras (king of Norway)(SAME CITATION), and attended Wittenberg University with Prince Hamlet. Horatio is only involved in the intrigue at the Danish court through Prince Hamlet; thus, he makes a good foil or sounding board for him. He is not identified as any specific court position, but simply as "Hamlet's friend". (CITE)

Citation for Horatio's role in the play: what version is the page citing already and is it better with or without direct quotes?

= Article evaluation of Hamlet at Elsinore= The following is an article evaluation, for practice in looking over pages and editing.

Content
For the most part, the page is very sparse and information that is present does not give weight to what is (objectively) important. There are only four sections present, and one is devoted entirely to a specific actor who plays a non-titular role. While I appreciate it deeply and may need to read another book now, I could make a strong case for its irrelevancy, and if it stays it would be valuable to seek out information on the experience of other actors as well. The introductory section references an opinion of the lead actor, so he and other actors must have some statements about the adaptation that could be included. Perhaps a different section could be created, which explores the approaches to interpreting characters. It might fit better, and could be joined by more relevant information.

It has several interesting facts, but since they are so simple and so short there is difficulty in properly integrating them. They are too disjointed for the introductory paragraph, but not enough information for their own sections. It's almost like it needs a fun facts trivia section, but it would take away most of the mass of the present article.

Since it is relatively old and very little has changed, I do not judge it out of date. It is just lacking information and depth, more of which may or may not be available at all.

Most of the edits have been made by only two individuals, which speaks to both the lack of content and lack of available information on the subject of the page. This is through no fault of the editors, but it would be valuable to try to find more information on it.

Tone
The tone seems perfectly neutral. It expresses opinions, but only the cited opinions of others. However, most of these opinions are from one specific individual which is rather unbalanced.

Talk page
The talk page contains no comments, topics, or conversation.

The article falls under two Wikiprojects: Shakespeare and Television. It is C-Class and Low-importance for both.