From Act III, scene iii, through the end of Act IV, the action of The Winter's Tale takes places in the rural, pastoral setting of Bohemia. With this shift in scenery comes a shift from tragedy to comedy. Conventionally, the pastoral mode idealizes the rural way of life, yet Peter Lindenbaum and Thomas McFarland observe that in The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's presentation of the pastoral world is somewhat less than ideal. Lindenbaum demonstrates that although Perdita is presented as an idealized spokesperson of pastoral life, the presence in the pastoral world of devastating storms, man-eating bears, and rustic characters who are not particularly intelligent or chaste, tarnishes the idyllic pastoral vision. A pastoral interlude, McFarland states, set within a work entitled The Winter's Tale, suggests from the beginning that ambivalence or sadness will tarnish the light,.....
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