Mariam - The Winter's Tale ⭐⭐⭐.5

As a play, this was not a very good play. It's weird because this was a late play of his but it felt like he was just learning how to write some of his tropes. This was again, the man who falsely accuses his pure wife of cheating on him on the flimsiest of excuses. À la Much Ado About Nothing and Othello. Sorry, I don't even have Muslim outrage anymore. It ran out with Othello.  

The story roughly goes that king and queen invite their childhood friend, other king over for a visit. 

He is leaving and king says to other king please stay. Other king declines. King asks queen to press other king. Other king gives in and stays. King decides this means they've been cuckolding him. He throws out queen and their newborn daughter. Their son, a child, dies of heartbreak. 

Queen dies. Newborn child is left to die of exposure but is saved by someone passing by.

 Other king escapes with barely his life. 

Time jump. Princess is growing up as a peasant but has caught other king's son's eye to other king's great offense. The two run away to the next kingdom which unbeknownst to them is actually her father's kingdom. 

Due to a series of events (which involve a seer to divine she's the princess), she is restored to her family and turns out queen didn't even die, she was pretending to be dead. Everyone is reunited except the dead prince who is really dead. 

This dry narration isn't me making a joke haha. It's actually what happened.

I lied, I was a little outraged about the accusation of adultery based off of the woman doing what the man asked her to do??? I went through some rumination on this. He used this plot point of false accusation so frequently that I wondered if Shakespeare was trying to point out that it's CRAZY to accuse a woman like this? But then this was supposed to be a tragicomedy, starting dark and ending well. Then I wondered if he'd falsely accused his wife of adultery or wondered if she did cheat on him while he left her in the countryside. Then I wondered if actually she did cheat on him. Then, I thought, well who knows. 

A typical Shakespeare rumination. 

I think the play itself was boring which surprised me because at this point Shakespeare is wealthy. If he doesn't have a good idea, he doesn't really have to write, does he?

But Kenneth Branagh did a fantastic job just adding atmosphere to it. It starts with a cozy Christmas family scene.

 He manages to get Judi Dench who has great delivery. That voice of hers is very moving. 

The fun musical scenes were actually good entertainment although I didn't understand the song at all. The singing was quite good. 

The queen did a great job of pretending to be a statue at the end and she was quite beautiful. Most of the stars are to the actors and producers. 

We have Kenneth Branagh's Love Labour Lost next. We are quite lucky to be in his time of Shakespeare productions, so I'm looking forward to it.