The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare , Edited by Susan Snyder , Deborah T. Curren-Aquino

• ISBN13: 9780521293730
• ISBN10: 0521293731
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This edition provides a newly edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Textual analysis, four appendices - including the theatrical practice of doubling, and a select chronology of performance history - and a reading list complete the edition.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Genre and title

Iterative patterns: sameness with a difference

LeontesG++ jealousy in criticism and performance

G++Exit pursued by a bearG++

The figure of Time

Act 5 and the triumphs of Time

The WinterG++s TaleG++s sense of an ending: happiness qualified

Date

Sources

Note on the text

List of characters

THE PLAY

Supplementary notes

Textual analysis

Appendices

Simon FormanG++s notes on The WinterG++s Tale

Some doubling possibilities in The WinterG++s Tale

The WinterG++s Tale in performance: selected issues, scenes, and passages

The WinterG++s Tale: a select performance chronology

Reading list

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