The winter's tale
By: edited by Stephen Orgel.
Contributors: Orgel, Stephen.
Series: The Oxford Shakespeare
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
Subjects: Fathers and daughters -- Drama; Married people -- Drama; Castaways -- Drama; Sicily (Italy) -- Kings and rulers -- Drama
Description: The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most perfectly realized tragi-comedy, as notable for its tragic intensity as for its comic grace and, throughout, for the richness and complexity of its poetry. It concludes, moreover, with the most daring and moving reconciliation scene in all Shakespeare's plays.

Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realist psychology and a powerful commentary on the violence implicit in family relationships and deep, long-lasting friendships.

Stephen Orgel's edition considers the play in relation to Renaissance conceptions of both dramatic genre and the family, traces the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards it, and places its psychological and dramatic conflicts within the Jacobean cultural and political context. The commentary pays special attention to the play's linguistic complexity, and the edition also includes a complete reprint of Shakespeare's source, Pandosto, by Robert Greene.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.