In the following essay, Bishop provides an overview of The Winter's Tale, focusing on the characterization, the sources of Leontes' paranoia, and the mythological and narrative patterns that structure the play.

In the following essay, Dolan examines early modern legal discourses and literary representations regarding infanticide, and asserts that despite its connection to other literary works in which child disposal by fathers is euphemized, The Winter's Tale is seldom acknowledged as such a story due to "the process of canon-formation. "

Lynn Enterline, Yale University Between Leontes's opening imperative, "Tongue-tied our queen? Speak you" (1.2.28), and the final act, where Hermione as living statue returns to her husband yet says nothing directly to him, The Winter 's Tale traces a complex, fascinated, and uneasy relation to female speech.1 A play much noted for interrogating the "myriad forms of human narration"2—old tales, reports, ballads, oracles—The Winter ...

In the essay that follows, Enterline examines Shakespeare's interpretation of Ovidian and Petrarchan rhetoric as a means of discussing the role of power and the female voice in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Cutts focuses on the issue of Leontes's jealousy, contending that the “boy eternal” complex from which Leontes suffers explains the apparently sudden onset of his jealousy, bridges the supposed division between the play's first three acts and the fourth act, and is further exploited in the theme of “re-wooing” in the fifth act.

Nora Johnson, Swarthmore College When historians discuss the relation between homosexual practice and homosexual identity in England before the eighteenth century, they often note that male same-sex behaviors coincided with neither a set of psychosocial characteristics nor a clear sexual preference. Alan Bray, for instance, describes satirical portrayals of the courtier who engaged in sodomy, arguing that these portrayals were striking from a twentieth-century perspective because of their failure to represe...

In the following essay, Kaplan and Eggert examine The Winter's Tale's relation to questions of female sexuality and authority during Queen Elizabeth's reign.

In the following essay, Alfar discusses Leontes as the embodiment of the tyranny of masculinist absolute rule and the commoditization of women. By challenging Leontes's patrilineal sovereignty, the critics avers, Hermione and Paulina represent “fantasies of female evil” who threaten the very underpinnings of the patriarchal order through their perceived adultery and rebellion. Alfar concludes that Shakespeare rejected “monarchical and conjugal tyranny” through the generic...

In this essay, Lenz divides the play into three distinct sections, associating each with a certain genre and outlining the steps of the "prepared surprise" as a structural unit.

In the following essay, Nevo contends that, while the traditional dramatic unities are flouted in The Winter's Tale, fantasy shapes the drama's two interrelated plots around a pair of dreams, "where one represents a terror inelecutably realized and the other a restitutive wish-fulfillment."

In the following essay, Van Elk views The Winter's Tale as an example of the “complicated, reciprocal relationship between gender and class” in the Jacobean period.

In the following essay, Ronk compares Leontes to Othello, and demonstrates that the function of elapsed time in The Winter's Tale allows a psychological shift in Leontes which does not occur in Othello.

In the following essay, Ronk investigates the psychological transformation of Leontes from a state of intense jealousy to one of penitence in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Bieman discusses The Winter's Tale's composition date and textual issues, provides an overview of its plot, language, themes, and characters, and argues that the play adapts the romance genre in order to emphasize its realism.

In the following essay, Nichols contends that the genres of comedy and tragedy are not equally balanced in The Winter's Tale; rather, comedy is victorious, particularly in the play’s implication that the tragic condition is not universal.

In the following excerpt, Kitch examines Shakespeare's representation of the print industry as a metaphor for paternity and illegitimacy in The Winter's Tale. According to Kitch, this theme touches on broader Jacobean anxieties with regard to reproduction in both the sexual sense—such as concerns about adultery and bastardy—and in the textual sense—such as the difficulty authorities had in monitoring and regulating rapidly produced printed matter. Hermione's restor...

In the following essay, Fowler discusses the allegorical relations in The Winter's Tale, maintaining that the pastoral scenes symbolically reveal Leontes ' transition from sin to repentance.

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.

In the following essay, Sokol maintains that Autolycus's roguery lends crucial support to the “reparative structure” of The Winter's Tale. According to Sokol, Shakespeare dramatized Autolycus in a non-moralistic fashion to demonstrate how “creative activity” emanates from the darker side of human nature.

In the following essay, McCandless posits that Leontes's persecution of Hermione represents his attempt to cast away his source of sexual shame.

In the essay below, Crider contends that the “mythic” and “theatrical” readings of Hermione are not mutually exclusive—that Hermione can be read as being both “dead and alive”—and provides textual evidence for both readings by examining Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

In the following essay, Hartwig proposes that in The Winter's Tale Shakespeare used a miraculous resolution to create a sense of dislocation and wonder in his audience, using Leontes's penitence and eventual recovery of Hermione as a way to stress the benevolence of the power that controls universe.

In the following essay, Girard interprets the jealousy of Leontes in terms of "mimetic desire, " suggesting that the motive for Leontes ' jealous behavior is based on his belief that he influenced Hermione to love Polixenes in a sort of imitation of his fondness for his friend.

In the essay that follows, Garner considers the dramatic tension of The Winter's Tale as a conflict between the present and time, as a place of innocence versus a realm of regret and longing.

In the following essay, Joughin argues that a finer understanding of the role of aesthetics in Shakespeare's plays will serve to increase our understanding of his work in general, and The Winter's Tale in particular.

In the essay that follows, originally presented at the Shakespeare Association of America in 1991, Mowat explores act four, scene three of The Winter's Tale—where Autolycus is introduced—as a dramatic moment in which the surface context and its "infracontexts" create a number of tensions that establish Autolycus as a rogue character.

In the excerpt below, Watson discusses the physical and spiritual reunification of the natural and artificial worlds of The Winter's Tale; including Perdita's rejection of the dead world of Sicily and her role in the redemption of Leontes' ambitious identity.

In the essay below, Morse examines The Winter’s Tale in order to reveal the shortcomings of New Historical criticism, and finds the ideology of the New Historicist conception to be “simplistic” and “misconceived.”

In the essay below, Henke examines the relationship between Battista Guarini's tragicomic theory and Shakespeare's drama, particularly focusing on The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Sanders examines the issue of Leontes's jealousy, citing several conditions that may be said to cause his reaction to Hermione's successful coaxing of Polixenes to remain in Sicilia.

In the following essay, Schwartz offers a psychological explanation of the sources and motivations for Leontes's jealousy in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, McDonald focuses on the distinct linguistic form employed in The Winter's Tale, stating that its more complex style is connected with the intricate plot.

In the following essay, Garner analyzes The Winter's Tale in terms of two temporal aspects—the change and consequences of time, and the moment unaffected by it—and extends his discussion to the interpenetration of these aspects during the statue scene.

In the following essay, Richards maintains that a principal motivating factor in Leontes's paranoid jealousy is his anxiety about social status. The critic examines a number of Renaissance courtesy treatises to show that Shakespeare adroitly recreated a dialectical Jacobean relationship between courtly and common attitudes in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Lim studies the way in which elements of The Winter's Tale, particularly the animation of Hermione's statue at the play's end, represent the conflict between Reformation and Catholic thought in Shakespeare's England.

In the following essay, Platt examines the philosophical opposition of rationality and wonder in The Winter's Tale.

In the following excerpt, Garber examines the importance of time in The Winter's Tale, especially with regard to dreams and the metamorphoses concomitant with seasonal changes.

In the following essay, Rosenfield maintains that The Winter's Tale exploits prevailing Jacobean cultural and ideological attitudes that associated feminine sexuality, maternity, and outspokenness with witchcraft. According to the critic, Shakespeare “reappropriates” these socially destabilizing feminine characteristics and cannily transforms them into a metaphor for the magic of artistic creation and theatrical performance.

In the following essay, originally published in 1964, Tayler analyzes the underlying structure of The Winter's Tale and identifies the relationship between nature and art as a central concern.

In the essay that follows, Stockholder considers the sexual conflict of The Winter's Tale to be resolved by dream-visions.

In the following essay, Cohen compares the jealousy of Othello with that of King Leontes of The Winter's Tale, examining their fantasies of wifely infidelity and their need to regain social control and status through murderous sacrifice.

In the following essay, Bryant places The Winter's Tale within the English pastoral tradition, and examines Shakespeare's transformation of the stereotypical elements of the pastoral style to create a tale that is “an involved and subtle commentary on appearance and reality.”

In the following essay, Bryant notes the indebtedness of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to the classical European and English pastoral traditions and argues that with this subtle dramatized commentary on appearance and reality Shakespeare brought freshness to the pastoral mode and transformed its hackneyed conventions.

Here, Gourlay traces Shakespeare's use of female metaphors in the play to explore elements of Leontes' own nature, and asserts that he opposes dark masculinity with the qualities of love, art, and nature represented by the three principal women.

In the following essay, Estok petitions for the academic recognition of a new critical theory called ecocriticism, or the study of how the environment has been perceived and represented in literary texts. The critic then presents a brief ecocritical assessment of The Winter's Tale, noting how the play reveals Shakespeare's “ecophobia” through his representation of nature as hostile and his depiction of crossbreeding as genetic pollution.

In the following essay, Hunt examines Shakespeare's use of the term “bear” in The Winter's Tale, associating it with such themes as tyranny, suffering, redemption, and sexual domination.

In the following essay, Sanders contends that Hermione rescues The Winter's Tale from a descent into utter failure, noting that it is her presence that lends grace to the play despite Shakespeare's dramatic lapses.

In the following essay, Marshall argues that the statue scene in The Winter's Tale suggests a modification of orthodox Christian eschatology by denying the dualism of body and soul. Relating this scene to a sixteenth-century heresy known as mortalism—which held that both soul and body were dead until judgment day, when both would be resurrected—Marshall emphasizes the communal as well as the miraculous nature of Hermione's reanimation.

In the following essay, Curtright challenges the critical position that Leontes displays characteristics of a tragic hero, arguing instead that Shakespeare envisioned him as a melodramatic villain who would evoke laughter from a Jacobean audience.

In the essay below, Hieatt examines "the adherence of mortals to a standard of ideal behaviour" as the shaping principle which forms a coherent basis of the play's structural segments.

In the following excerpt, originally delivered as a lecture at the Ohio Shakespeare Conference in Dayton, 1981, Davidson discusses the symbolic significance of visual effects in a series of episodes in The Winter's Tale, including the display of male friendship, the onset of Leontes's jealousy, the trial scene, the storm on the shore of Bohemia, the sheep-shearing scene, and the transformation of Hermione.

R. W. Desai, University of Delhi The opening scenes of The Winter's Tale bring together royalty from three different regions in Europe: Leontes, king of Sicily, which is in the extreme south, in the Mediterranean region; his wife, Hermione, daughter of the Emperor of Russia in the northeast; and Polixenes, king of Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, also in the northeast. This joining of geographical regions has its counterpoint in the contemporary joining of the regions of literary and other forms of c...

In the essay below, Uphaus discusses the role of language in establishing the integration of tragic and comic perception in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Frye examines the dramatic contrast found in The Winter's Tale, focusing on the differences between the human arts—music, poetry, and magic—and the power of the gods and nature, as well as the truths these elements reveal.

In the following excerpt, Kiefer emphasizes Time's restorative powers as well as its destructive ones in The Winter's Tale. Time's dual nature, the critic suggests, is symbolized by the hourglass he carries, for its inversion signals a dramatic movement from catastrophe to consolation.

In the following essay, Wolf examines parallels between the leading female characters in Shakespeare's drama The Winter's Tale and the Greek goddesses Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate.

In this excerpt, Young discusses the significance of the parental blessing in The Winter's Tale—both the offering and the denial—and its function in conveying grace.

In the following essay, Bergeron argues that Hermione's trial in The Winter's Tale reflects a triumph of rationality over passion.

In the following essay, Laroque asserts that possible correlations exist between The Winter's Tale and the cycles of the year associated with pagan, Christian, and folk traditions.

In the essay below, Wright argues that the contro versy surrounding the beginning of Leontes' jealousy overshadows Shakespeare's own dramatic emphasis of the collapse of Leontes' rational nature.

In this excerpt, Orgel explores the importance of Bohemia to Shakespeare's development of pastoral elements, as well as the play's treatment of the relationship between nature and art.

In the following essay, Abrams examines the source of Leontes's jealousy, noting that “[under the spell of jealousy, Leontes is changed. His good angel, reason, abandons him, and the tempter, imagination, does his thinking for him.”]

In the following essay, Viswanathan theorizes that in his later plays, particularly The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare was extremely experimental with his theatrical techniques, mixing “self-conscious theatricality” with “convincing verisimilitude.”

In the following essay, Abrams probes Leontes's seemingly “causeless, self-begetting jealousy” in The Winter's Tale.

In the following essay, Nathan finds that Leontes's jealousy of Polixenes in The Winter's Tale appears quite suddenly, but is nevertheless properly motivated by Shakespeare.

In the following essay, Trienens focuses on the inception of Leontes's jealousy and contends that the character is beset with feelings of distrust from the very beginning of the play.

In this essay, Bevington relates The Winter's Tale to Shakespeare's late romances in an effort to highlight its tragic elements, particularly Leontes' jealousy.

In the following review, Isherwood assesses the Public Theatre's version of The Winter's Tale directed by Brian Kulick, arguing that the production is not successful in handling the shift from the tragedy and drama of the first half of the play to the pastoral comedy of the play's second half. Isherwood additionally comments on the shortcomings of Keith David's Leontes and Erica N. Tazel's Perdita.

In the following review, Canby praises Ingmar Bergman's 1995 staging of The Winter's Tale at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, for its lucid artistic vision that succeeded with minimal theatrical affectation.

In the following review, Isherwood acknowledges the difficulty faced by Barry Edelstein in directing a modern-day production of The Winter's Tale, but notes that the performance suffered not from the efforts to reconcile the two worlds, but from the lackluster acting of the cast.

In the following review, Jays asserts that Gregory 1999 Doran's Royal Shakespeare Company rendering of The Winter's Tale was a “supremely intelligent production, lucid in every detail” and notes that Antony Sher gave a powerful performance as Leontes.

In the following review, Flanders presents a mixed review of Nicholas Hytner's 2001 production of The Winter's Tale at London's National Theatre. While Hytner's vision of a menacing, corporate Sicilia convincingly accentuated Leontes's paranoia, Flanders avers, the director lost control of his production with his free-wheeling interpretation of the Bohemia episodes.

In the following excerpt, Clapp admires Nicholas Hytner's 2001 modern-dress staging of The Winter's Tale at London's National Theatre. According to the critic, Hytner's contemporary interpretation was underscored by a striking thematic contrast between the monochrome, bureaucratic Sicilian court and the anti-establishment Bohemia.

In the following review, Wolf offers a mixed appraisal of the Royal National Theater's modern dress production of The Winter's Tale directed by Nicholas Hytner. Wolf praises the successful portrayal of the play's second half, but comments that this success does not fully compensate for the slow and uninspiring first half of the play.

In the following excerpted review, McNulty reviews the Classic Stage Company's 2003 production of The Winter's Tale, claiming that while Barry Edelstein's modernistic staging of the play was elegant and unhurried, the acting failed to display authentic emotion, leaving the audience unable to connect to the far-fetched story.

In the following review, Macaulay derides Matthew Warchus's 2002 Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale for its unnecessary length and for the English actors' distracting use of American accents.

In the following review, Brustein provides a favorable notice of Ingmar Bergman's 1995 Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, production of The Winter's Tale.