The Winter's Tale | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 39 pages of analysis & critique of The Winter's Tale.
This section contains 10,252 words
(approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Mary Ellen Lamb

SOURCE: “Engendering the Narrative Act: Old Wives' Tales in The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and The Tempest,” in Criticism, Vol. XL, No. 4, Fall, 1998, pp. 529-53.

In the following essay, Lamb analyzes the role of women's folk tales and their influence in The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and The Tempest.

As Macbeth stares in terror at Banquo's ghost during a banquet for the Scottish lords, Lady Macbeth contemptuously compares his hallucination to oral narratives circulated among women:

                                                            O proper stuff! This the very painting of your fear; This the air-drawn dagger which you said Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts (Imposters to true fear) would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire, Authoriz’d by her grandam. Shame itself, Why do you make such faces?(1) 

Framing her criticism with attacks against his masculinity—“Are you a man?” and “What, quite unmanned in folly?”—Lady Macbeth represents...

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This section contains 10,252 words
(approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Mary Ellen Lamb
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Critical Essay by Mary Ellen Lamb from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.