Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe (
Mythology
Ovid
Pyramus and Thisbe are two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupy connected houses. Their respective parents, driven by rivalry, forbid them to wed. Through a crack in one of the walls they whisper their love for each other. They arrange to meet near a tomb under a mulberry tree and state their feelings for each other. Thisbe arrives first, but upon seeing a lioness with a bloody mouth from a recent kill, she flees, leaving behind her cloak. When Pyramus arrives, he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's cloak: the lioness had torn it and left traces of blood behind, as well as its tracks. Assuming that a wild beast had killed her, Pyramus kills himself, falling on his sword, a typical Babylonian way to commit suicide, 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 praying to their parents and the gods to have them buried together and 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 honor forbidden love. Pyramus and Thisbe proved to be faithful lovers to each other until the very end and killed themselves so that they could be together.
Origins and other versions
Ovid's is the oldest surviving version of the story, published in 8 AD, but he adapted an existing
Adaptations
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in
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
In Shakespeare's is in love with Demetrius.
The Beatles performed a humorous performance of “Pyramus and Thisbe” on the 1964 television special Around the Beatles. Primarily based around William Shakespeare's adaptation, the performance featured Paul McCartney as Pyramus, John Lennon as his lover Thisbe, George Harrison as Moonshine, and Ringo Starr as Lion, with Trevor Peacock in the role of Quince.
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 Thisbé, a lyric tragedy in five 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."[8] 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,[9] whose 1960 musical adaptation, The Fantasticks, became the world's longest-running musical.
Pyramus and Thisbe were featured in The Simpsons 2012 episode "The Daughter Also Rises". Nick and Lisa's misunderstood love was compared to Thisbe and Pyramus’ forbidden love. Much like the crack in the wall, Lisa and Nick met through a crack between two booths in an Italian restaurant. Lisa and Nick are portrayed as the two characters during a later portion of the episode. They go to finish off their story and head for the tree under which Pyramus and Thisbe's fate presented itself.
Bolu Babalola adapted the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in her 2020 anthology Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold. In this version Pyramus and Thisbe are college students living next door to each other in an old college dorm with a crack in the wall. Unlike in the original myth, their story ends with them happily together.
In art
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Painting in Pompeii
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Roman mosaic at Paphos, Cyprus
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Painting attributed to Jasper van der Laanen (1585–1634)
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16th century, Unterlinden Museum Colmar
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Nicolaus Knüpfer, early 17th century
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Nicholas Poussin, 1651
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Andreas Nesselthaler, 1795
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Pierre Gautherot, 1799
See also
- Latin literature
- Pyramus and Thisbe Club, a UK organisation concerned with party wall legislation
- Star-crossed
Citations
- ISBN 978-1118876121.
- ^ Nicolaus Sophista, Progymnasmata 2.9
- ^ Westermann, Anton (1843). Μυθογραφοι. Scriptores poeticæ historiæ Græci. Edidit A. W. Gr. p. 384.
- ISBN 0-674-01130-9
- ISBN 0772720150.
- ^ Athens. The palace of THESEUS: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1
- ^ Shakespeare, Ovid, and the Adaptation of “Pyramus and Thisbe”
- ^ Recorded on Hyperion Records, CDA66759
- ^ "Harvey Schmidt, Fantasticks Composer, Dies at 88 | Playbill". Playbill. Retrieved 2018-09-13.
General references
Primary sources
- Ovid, Metamorphoses iv.55–166
Secondary sources
- Bulfinch, Thomas, The Age of Fable; Or, Stories of Gods and Heroes (2nd ed.), Sanborn, Carter, and Bazin, 1856
External links
- Pyramus and Thisbe: Carlos Parada, Greek Mythology link
- pXt A visual novel adaptation of the story from A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Queen Leer: Why, Thisbe? (Song and music video)
- The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Pyramys and Thisbe)
Babylon Babylon