FAMOUS BEDS IN FICTION

Dreams have always been important in stories. Prophetic dreams feature heavily in “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, one of the first recorded works of literature. Shakespeare has Romeo and Mercutio lyrically debate the nature of dreams in the play, Romeo & Juliet. Dreams also featured heavily in Egyptian Mythology, and one of their Gods, Tutu, is a guardian against bad dreams.

With this foundation, it is no wonder that beds also feature heavily infamous fictional works, due to beds being the place that dreams naturally occur.

One famous bed is The Great Bed of Ware. This bed, constructed in the 1590s, became famed for its large size; it was three metres wide and weighed over 640kgs. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare refers to its enormous size. Many other great authors throughout history referenced the Great Bed of Ware within their works, including Richard Brome, Mary Davys, and Thomas Hood. This possibly makes The Great Bed of Ware one of the most mentioned beds within fiction.

However, although mentioned in many stories, there are no fictional stories published specifically about The Great Bed of Ware.

One story which does have a bed as the main feature is The Princess and the Pea. In this fairy tale, a girl who claims to be a Princess seeks shelter from the rain in a castle. The Queen of this castle, due to not having a luxury King of Cotton bed for the guest to feel comfortable in, puts twenty mattresses on a bed for the girl. Unknown to the child, the Queen places a pea at the very bottom of this pile. The young girl wakes up in the morning and complains that she had something digging into her back all night. In the tale, this confirms the girl like a Princess, with the Queen reasoning that only a Princess would be sensitive enough to feel the pea.

Another famous bed is that in the tale of Sleeping Beauty. In this tale, a witch curses a Princess on the day of her christening. The curse states that the Princess will prick her finger on a spindle one day and will die. A good fairy changes the curse, making it so the Princess will instead fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years, rather than die. Once the Princess inevitably pricks her finger, the king places her in a large bed made out of fabric embossed with gold and waits for a Prince to wake her up.

Whereas Sleeping Beauty is all about sleeping comfortably, one other famous story is about staying awake in bed.

In this case, the reason for staying up is to get to the end of a story. In the tale of Arabian Nights, a King, with a penchant for executing his wives after their first night together, marries a new girl, Scheherazade. Scheherazade spends their evening together telling him a story but stops the tale when the dawn arrives. She refuses to finish it until the following day. On the next day, the King eagerly takes the wife back into his bed, places his head on his most comfortable pillow, and asks his wife to finish the story. She does, and starts a new one, refusing, once again to tell the ending until the next day. This carries on for a thousand and one nights until Scheherazade runs out of new tales and the King decides to spare her life because Scheherazade’s stories have made him a better person.

The experience of the King in this tale is a common one. Many people stay up late in their bed to finish reading a new novel. Using King of Cotton’s Bedroom Products is one of the most comfortable ways of doing this and, because the quality of the products are better than anything you’ll read in fiction, having a King of Cotton home can help to prevent feelings of envy from any beds mentioned in your bedtime reading material.