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subtly different from the other
tragic plays. In the longer tragedies,
the extremity of suffering in the
protagonist’s self-discovery means
that the only way out is death. In
The Winter’s Tale, Leontes is utterly
distraught—but he is alive, and will
go on living with the knowledge of
his mistake for another 16 years.
As he leaves the stage, not to
reappear for an hour, Leontes vows
to do penance every day—“...tears
shed...” he says, “Shall be my
recreation” (3.2.238, 239). He will
have no pleasure, but the word
“recreation” has another meaning—
tears will be his re-creation, his
rebuilding and redemption.
The tragedy does not end with
Leontes’s grief. A brief final scene
shows Antigonus laying Leontes’s
baby daughter on the shores of
Bohemia, and naming her Perdita,
the “lost one.” It is the last disaster
made by Leontes’s folly—and yet it
seems like the beginning of a fairy
tale, with an abandoned princess.
In true fairy tale style, the lost baby
is discovered by an Old Shepherd—
but not before Antigonus meets his
end with one of the most famous
stage directions of all time, “Exit,
pursued by a bear” (Act 3, Scene 3).
(In the play’s first production, a real
bear may have been used—there
was a famous bear pit near the
theater. Now, almost always,
however they enact the bear,
directors play it for laughs.) With
the entry of the Old Shepherd andTHE KING’S MAN
Geography and the play In moving the action of The
Winter’s Tale from Sicily to the
shores of Bohemia—in reality a
landlocked region of central
Europe—the modern reader may
wonder at the vagueness of some
of Shakespeare’s geographical
settings. There is no evidence that
Shakespeare ever left England.
He relied on a variety of sources
for the locations, mostly around
the Mediterranean, where the
plots of 31 of his 38 plays are
set. His Rome and Egypt in
Julius Caesar and Antony and
Cleopatra were gleaned from
Plutarch; his Venice in Othelloand The Merchant of Venice
probably derived from travel
books and novels such as
The Unfortunate Traveler by
Thomas Nashe, published in- The portrayal of Troy of
Troilus and Cressida was taken
from The Iliad.
However, not all the locations
in the plays are meant to be
taken too literally. Bohemia in
The Winter’s Tale, like Athens
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and Ardennes in As You Like It,
represented, to Shakespeare’s
audience, an exotic idyll
and escapism.
A production of The Winter’s Tale at
the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar,
Germany (2012), presented the Sicilian
court as a harsh place reminiscent of
an earlier, reactionary Germany.
his son, with their good-natured
rustic quirks, the play suddenly
shifts from darkest tragedy to
romantic comedy.A pastoral idyll
When the play recommences in
Act 4, it is in a different world.
Time has moved on 16 years.
The scene is the countryside of
Bohemia in early summer. The
mood is wholeheartedly comic and
romantic, as the baby Perdita, ❯❯