The Winter's Tale | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 40 pages of analysis & critique of The Winter's Tale.
This section contains 10,229 words
(approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by David McCandless

SOURCE: “‘Verily Bearing Blood’: Pornography, Sexual Love, and the Reclaimed Feminine in The Winter's Tale,” in Essays in Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, November, 1990, pp. 61-81.

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

Early in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Polixenes recalls the boyhood paradise he shared with Leontes and attributes its end to the intrusion of “blood”—here a synonym for man's “sensual, animal appetite” (OED 1: 929).

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun, And bleat the one at th’ other. What we chang’d Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d That any did. Had we pursu’d that life, And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven Boldly, “not guilty”; the...

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This section contains 10,229 words
(approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by David McCandless
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Critical Essay by David McCandless from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.