The Winter's Tale | Themes & Symbolism

The Winter's Tale Principal Topics

Pastoral Elements

A pastoral is a poem or play dealing with shepherds and rural life. Within the conventional treatment of pastoral themes, this rural way of life is idealized. In The Winter's Tale, the pastoral scenes or "pastoral interlude" as it is often referred to, begins in Act Ill, scene iii, when the action of the play shifts from Sicilia to Bohemia. In Act IV, which 15egins with Time announcing that sixteen yeatS have past, the interlude continues through the last scene of this act. With the passage of time and the movement from the Sicilian court to the Bohemian countryside comes a movement from the tragedy of the first three acts to comedy. The lightness of comedy reaches into the play's final act, in which the pastoral characters journey to the Sicilian court. The pastoral scenes, with their rustic figures, festival, singing and dancing, serve as a sharp contrast to the...
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