qarTvelologi THE KARTVELOLOGIST JOURNAL OF GEORGIAN STUDIES STUDIES: GEORGIAN-EUROPEAN PHILOLOGY The Man in the Panther Skin – Shakespeare’s Literary Source Elguja Khintibidze Professor of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Head of the University’s Institute of the History of Georgian Literature. Head of the Fund for Kartvelian Studies. Abstract: The present study is the first publication of research that resulted in significant innovation both in Rustaveli studies and English literary criticism: Rustaveli’s MPS (“The Man in the Panther Skin”) is the literary source of Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. The fact that the MPS was used as a plot story in early 17 th century English dramaturgy, namely in the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher ( A King and No King, Philaster) was dealt with in my earlier study. Further research into this topic led me to new conclusions. The point is that back in the 19 th century a plot, thematic and ideal similarity was noticed between Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. In the opinion of modern researchers, these resemblance must derive from a common literary source. My discovery of the MPS being the plot story of Philaster, hitherto unknown to English literary criticism, prompted me to the need of studying the relationship of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline to the MPS. It transpired that the common source of the resemblance, noticed between Cymbeline and Philaster in English literary criticism, is the story of Rustaveli’s Nestan and Tariel. Furthermore, the subtle differences found between similar passages of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Philaster by Beaumont and Fletcher are again related to MPS. The present issue of the Kartvelologist carries only the first part of the study.