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T
he Winter’s Tale combines
the pastoral humor and
romance of As You Like It
with the dark power of Othello. Yet
the play is something of an enigma.
In Shakespeare’s day, a winter’s
tale was something told by old
wives at the fireside. It was a
fanciful story, typically with
a simple salutary lesson. As
Leontes’s son Mamillius says when
he proposes to tell his mother a
story, “A sad tale’s best for winter”
(2.1.27). And in many ways that
is what The Winter’s Tale is: a sad
story with a happy ending, a tale
of loss and redemption.Winter and tragedy
The first three acts of the play are
not like a fairy tale at all; they
are an emotional drama as grim
as any classical tragedy. King
Leontes of Sicily finds his wife
Hermione so successful in
persuading his boyhood friend
Polixenes to stay longer that he
suspects they are having an affair.
His mind is eaten up with jealousy,
expressed in language so sodden
with sexual innuendo that it almost
loses sense: “Gone already! / Inch-
thick, knee-deep, o’er head, and
ears a fork’d one!” (1.2.187–188) He
is talking about wading deeper intoTHE WINTER’S TALE
adultery, with the “forked one” the
horns of a cuckold, a husband
cheated in adultery. But the
imagery is phallic and lewd.
As he becomes increasingly
obsessed, Leontes behaves
erratically, like Othello, but he
has no need of an Iago to feed his
suspicion; it is all there in his
fevered imagination. It is what he
memorably calls the spider in the
cup—you might swallow it happily
in ignorance, but you will throw up
if you see it.
His rage escalates, and Leontes
proceeds to destroy those closest
to him. Separation from his mother
kills Mamillius, and the shock of
her son’s death kills Hermione. Only
with the loss of all his family does
Leontes come to his senses and
realize the horror he has wrought.
The play’s first part is almost
a full-blown tragedy. And yet the
action all takes place in just three
short acts, not the conventional five.
Leontes’s jealousy seems to erupt
out of nowhere and takes just a few
hundred lines to explode to the
point of no return. Some audiences
find the abruptness and extremity
of his reaction difficult to accept. In
barely an hour of stage time, the
entire tragedy has been played out.
Yet this mini-tragedy’s ending isIN CONTEXT
THEMES
Jealousy, suffering, hope,
love, redemptionSETTING
Winter in Sicily, and
summer 16 years later
in Bohemia and SicilySOURCES
1588 Robert Greene’s romantic
prose tale Pandosto.LEGACY
1611 The first performance is
at The Globe in May.1754 An adaptation, The
Sheep-shearing, or Florizel and
Perdita, by McNamara Morgan
is staged at Covent Garden.1802–11 Actor John Philip
Kemble stages a series of
grand productions in London.1881 The Duke of Saxe-
Meiningen’s famous company
tours Europe with an
acclaimed production.1912 Director Harley Granville-
Barker’s psychologically
realistic production opens
at the Savoy Theatre, London.
1958 Christopher Plummer
plays Leontes as a victim in
a Canadian production.2001 Nicholas Hytner’s
National Theatre production
sets the sheep-shearing
contest at a rock festival.2009 Sam Mendes opens his
Bridge Project, an Anglo-
American theater partnership,
with The Winter’s Tale. Simon
Russell Beale plays Leontes
and Ethan Hawke is Autolycus.Too hot, too hot:
To mingle friendship farre
is mingling bloods.
Leontes
Act 1, Scene 2Sir, spare your treats.
The bug which you would
fright me with, I seek.
Hermione
Act 3, Scene 2