WINTER'S TALE, THE

play in five acts by William Shakespeare, produced in 161011 at the Globe Theatre in London and published in the First Folio of 1623, from a transcript, by Ralph Crane, of very imperfect foul papers. One of Shakespeare's final plays, The Winter's Tale is a romantic comedy with elements of tragedy. The plot is based on the play Pandosto (1588) by Robert Greene. The plot opens with Leontes, the king of Sicilia, entertaining his old friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. Leontes jealously mistakes the courtesy between his wife Hermione and Polixenes as a sign of Hermione's adultery with him. In a fit of jealousy he attempts to have Polixenes killed, but Polixenes escapes with Camillo, Leontes' faithful counselor, who has been sent to kill him. The pregnant Hermione is then publicly humiliated and thrown in jail, despite her protests of innocence. When the child, a girl, is born, Leontes rejects her out of hand and gives her over to Antigonus, the husband of Hermione's attendant Paulina, who is instructed to abandon the baby in some wild place. Having learned of his mother's mistreatment, Leontes' beloved son Mamillius dies, and Hermione, too, is carried out and reported dead. Having lost everyone who is important to him and realized the error of his ways, Leontes is left to his solitary despair. Meanwhile, the baby girl, named Perdita, is brought up by a shepherd and his wife. She appears in Act IV as a young and beautiful shepherdess who has been discovered by Polixenes' son Florizel. Needless to say, her true status is eventually discovered, and she and Florizel travel to Leontes' court. There all is forgiven, and Hermione, who is seen as a statue, proves to be alive. In The Winter's Tale Shakespeare's audacity had increased. He introduced a combination of heterogeneous civilizations similar to that found in The Tempest. But he also abandoned a unity of development in the story: he made a break of 16 years in the middle of the play, introducing the figure of Time to persuade the audience to accept the rapid shift of dramatic time. Shakespeare similarly challenged their confidence by the pathos of the deaths of the little boy Mamillius and, seemingly, of his mother, Hermione, followed by the repentance of her jealous husband, Leontes. He also allows Antigonus, a most attractive character, to be eaten by a bear. Shakespeare clearly intended the audience to become involved only at certain moments of the play, by intensifying particular episodes without allowing emotional commitment to the whole plot. Three times his characters use the phrase like an old tale, as if they were themselves commenting on its incredibility. What might have been the most moving scene or series of scenes in this group of playsthe revelation of Perdita's true birthis related only at second hand by a number of anonymous gentlemen. Presumably, Shakespeare did not wish to anticipate or reduce the theatrical effect of the final scene, in which the statue of Hermione comes to life. Or perhaps, having already shown a similar scene of recognition of father and long-lost daughter in Pericles, he did not wish to repeat himself.