The Winter's Tale

Description

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This 2007 edition provides a newly-edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Textual analysis, four appendices - including the theatrical practice of doubling, and a select chronology of performance history - and a reading list complete the edition.

Reviews

'... The New Cambridge Shakespeare produces superb editions that rank with the Arden and the Oxford as the best in the business. This year's The Winter's Tale is no exception.' Studies in English Literature

Author description

Susan Snyder was formerly a scholar in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a former Professor of English at Swarthmore College. Deborah T. Curren-Aquino is Reader at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC.

Table of contents

Introduction: Genre and title; Iterative patterns: sameness with a difference; Leontes' jealousy in criticism and performance; 'Exit pursued by a bear'; The figure of Time; Act 5 and the triumphs of Time; The Winter's Tale's sense of an ending: happiness qualified; Date; Sources; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Supplementary notes; Textual analysis; Appendices: A. Simon Forman's notes on The Winter's Tale; B. Some doubling possibilities in The Winter's Tale; C. The Winter's Tale in performance: selected issues, scenes, and passages; D. The Winter's Tale: a select performance chronology; Reading list.