Storyteller, Dorothy Ormes and musician, Pat O'Scannell will present a retelling of stories rooted in the oral tradition that inspired Shakespeare. These three stories, one from Italy, one from India and the last, a bilingual interpretation of a tale collected in the mountains of Chile in 1950, are all related to the plot line of Cymbeline. It is well known that Shakespeare borrowed extensively from oral tradition for plot development. Many oral tales had already made their way into the literature available to Shakespeare. Cymbeline is an excellent example of Shakespeare patching together material from several folktale sources to retell a story familiar to women, Imogen's journey from happy innocence to world-wise maturity. In Elizabethan England, on the cusp of a shift between oral tradition and print culture, many of the people who attended Shakespeare's plays, especially those who were illiterate, could relate to them largely because of the storytelling. This performance brings these folktales to a literate modern audience in order to give a glimpse of the cultural richness and diversity underlying Shakespeare's work. A printed program will provides sources for the stories and added information about the process of bringing them back into an oral context.