The Winter's Tale: Annotated Edition
- ISBN-10
- 1698819188
- ISBN-13
- 9781698819181
- Series
- The Winter's Tale
- Pages
- 224
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-10-10
- Author
- William Shakespeare
Description
Written toward the end of William Shakespeare's theatrical career, The Winter's Tale (1609-1611) is a story of loss and redemption. In a fit of wild and unfounded jealousy, Leontes, the King of Sicily, convinces himself that his pregnant wife is carrying his best friend's love child. Leontes's jealousy turns to tyranny as the king proceeds to destroy his entire family and a lifelong friendship. Sixteen long years pass, and we witness one of the most astonishing endings in English literature.The play is famous for its two-part structure, which makes The Winter's Tale seem like two entirely different plays that are joined together at the end. The first three acts enact a mini-tragedy and occur in wintery Sicily, while the second half of the play occurs in Bohemia during the summer months and features the kind of restorative ending typical of Shakespeare's "comedies."Because of its mixed genre, the play is often referred to as one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" (a group that also includes Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Tempest). To complicate matters, these works are also referred to as Shakespeare's "romances," which you can read more about in "Genre."Aside from its unique structure and Shakespeare's experiments in genre, The Winter's Tale is also famous for its flagrant disregard for the "classical unities" (of time, place, and action), literary rules that say all plays should have the following features: 1) the action should take place within a 24 hour time span; 2) the action should take place in one geographical place/setting; 3) the play should have one main plot and no sub-plots. Most of Shakespeare's plays ignore the "classical unities," but The Winter's Tale takes it a step further by having the figure Time appear on stage at the beginning of Act 4 to announce that Shakespeare is fast-forwarding sixteen years and changing the location from Sicily to Bohemia - if anyone has a problem, they should just get over it, please.Much of The Winter's Tale is based on Robert Greene's Pandosto, The Triumph of Time (published 1588), a pastoral romance about a jealous king who banishes his infant daughter and drives away his friend. Shakespeare also draws from the story of Pygmalion in Book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.Over the years, there's been some speculation that The Winter's Tale is really about King Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded after being (unfairly) accused and convicted of adultery in 1536.
