New Analogical Evidence for Cymbeline’s Folkloric Composition in the Medieval Icelandic Ála flekks saga

Abstract

This article explores a number of striking correspondences between Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and a little-known, late medieval Icelandic romance, Ála flekks saga. Using as a basis the two texts’ common affinity with the “Snow White” folktale, the article untangles their complex analogical relationship by examining the oblique illumination shed by each text on the folktale traditions from which both of them drew, as well as the implications that those findings carry for the folkloric composition of each text. It also addresses one other curiosity in the saga of potential interest to the Shakespeare scholar: the presence of the name “Polloníus.”