The Winter's Tale (1623)

The Winter’s Tale is part tragedy, part comedy; a combination that for me did not work so well. Leontes displays the worst kind of tyranny of a jealous man; destroying his wife and children by his rage; losing his best friend and trusted servant in the process. The destructive power of jealousy is well described - he cannot hear good counsel, and rails that those who give it are trying to cover up the crime he imagines. The severe and solemn tones of the first three acts are all tragedy, ending with tragic deaths and departures.

Then we swerve into comedy in the last two acts - sheperd’s festival, bawdy jokes, a thief’s dirty tricks, and a love story dominate the second half. Darker tones do surface, however, in an angry king, echoing Leontes’ tyranny. But is it all well if it ends well? And, perhaps most ambigously of all Shakespeare’s plays I have read, does it really end well? What did really happen?

My Arden Shakespeare edition advises me that the Reneissance’s big questions are pondered here - Time and Nature and the like. Perhaps. I am still reading the non-play parts of the text, so I might learn more. However, without the talking heads interpreting the text for me, I find this play a bit too disjointed - the two tones did not merge for me well, and I could not forgive Leontes for his tyranny, which went unpunished, as it was his right to abuse his wife in such terrible way. It us a reminder how utterly women were subjected to men, and that their word did not count. ( )

I have drunk and seen the spider.

One’s suspension of disbelief will be sorely tested here. The king of Sicily is a paranoid git. Was he always of this character or did he arrive at such by an untoward alignment of humors? Again, just go with it. The tyrant is convinced that his wife has been untrue. The king of Bohemia is the suspect. His wife is pregnant, a physical symbol of his being cuckolded. This is a comedy, right? He's allowed to fume and bellow, allowing a stage of fire and fury to persist through a trial and beyond with a flourish of Nixonian exactness .

The accused flee and then the sunny Czech coast becomes the subsequent location as sixteen years have lapsed since the previous act, the interim allowing the child to have grown to a plot pivot. There’s a bear, a clown and several royals in disguise. There is an amazing of wooing where the natural character of the garden is discussed and explored. I was hoping for something akin to The Tempest and alas it didn’t happen. ( )

The Penguin editors' sensibilities really match "The Winter's Tale". ( )

The first Shakespeare I've read on my own, i.e. not for a class. Not sure what I think of it yet. The ending seemed wooden, as if everyone was just going through the motions. Probably my own projection.

It was enjoyable, but I'm motivated more by my desire to read Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare than I am Shakespeare himself. ( )

This is another Shakespeare play I have read in anticipation of seeing it next weekend at The Globe, as I did a fortnight ago with Othello. However, I found this play to be nowhere near as enjoyable. The plot seems too thin and insubstantial in practice for five acts, and the atmosphere of fantasy does not work for me - this is considered one of the Bard's "problem plays", neither a true tragedy nor a comedy, though containing elements of both. Like Othello, it is marked by themes of jealousy and remorse, but nowhere near as vividly and convincingly for me. ( )