The Winter’s Tale

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.

The Winter”s Tale, one of Shakespeare”s later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leontes” murderous jealousy and Perdita”s love-relationship with Florizel are eloquently intense. In the theatre, The Winter”s Tale often proves to be diversely entertaining and deeply moving.