Francesca and Paolo We Kiss in a Shadow from The King and I

The story of Francesca and Paolo in Dantes Inferno is paralleled in the song We Kiss In
A Shadow from Rodgers and Hammersteins The King and I. Francesca and Paolo have an
extra-marital affair as they read from the tales of King Arthur, which is paralleled in the
forbidden love between Guinevere, Arthurs wife and queen, and his knight Lancelot. The pair is
enchanted by the tales, and are overcome with lust simply by the act of reading of the tales
together. In the song We Kiss In A Shadow, Tuptim is given to the King of Siam as a gift from
the King of Burma. However, Tuptim, is in love with another man back in Burma, Lun Tha. Lun
Tha serves as the emissary from Burma to the court of Siam, and the pair meet in secret, for if
they are caught they risk death by the hand of the King, who rules his kingdom with an iron first.
The pair in this song lament over their desire to be together and out from under the yoke of the
King, when their love wont have to be secret and they can kiss in the sunlight. Francesca and
Paolos affair is less romantic and more lustful than the affair of Lun Tha and Tuptim. Their
affair ends in blood as they are caught in the act by Francescas husband, and are murdered by
his hand. The pair is sent to hell for their crime of passion, as is Francescas husband for his
murder of family. Francesca recounts her story to Dante:
...One day we read, to pass the time away,
of Lancelot, of how he fell in love;
we were alone, innocent of suspicion.
Time and again our eyes were brought together
by the book we read our faces flushed and paled.
To the moment of one line alone we yielded:

it was when we read about those longed-for lips now being kissed by a famous lover, that this
one (who shall never leave my side)
then kissed my mouth (Inferno: Canto V 127-136).
Though the types of affairs between the stories may differ, one torrid, the other more
romantic, they are both characterized by lovers who cannot be together because of societal
constraints -- the women are committed to other men for political reasons. The story of The King
and I stems from the 1956 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, who recounts
the story of the five years Anna Leonowens spent at the Siamese court as a tutor of English
language and customs. The novel itself is based upon Anna Leonowens own memoirs and
enhanced with information about the Siamese people and culture from other resources.
The story of Francesca and Paolo is culled from contemporaries of Dante. Francesca da
Rimini was a contemporary of Dantes who was married to the crippled Giovanni Malatesta, for
political reasons. It can be interpreted that because of Giovannis impairment, he could not
perform as a husband should, and that is why the affair between Francesca and Giovannis
younger brother Paolo developed. In the Inferno, as in the reality upon which it was based,
Francesca and Paolo were killed by Giovanni. However, the actual story behind Lun Tha and
Tuptims romance is less a scandalous love and more about a betrayal of the Crown. Tuptim, the
female lover is based upon the character, Hidden-Perfume, in Anna Leonowens first memoir,
The English Governess At The Siamese Court. Hidden Perfumes story was that she was a wife
of the King who had long been out of favor with her lord (Leonowens 105), and in her quest
to gain station once again she tried to install her brother as a high ranking official in the kings
court, not knowing that another noble had already been preferred to the post by his

Majesty (Leonowens 110). As in the story of the King and I, Hidden-Perfume is saved by Anna
from harsh punishment by the King.