The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, first published in the First Folio in 1623. Although it was listed as a comedy when it first appeared, some modern editors have relabeled the play a romance. Some critics, among them W. W. Lawrence (Lawrence, 9-13), consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays", because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comedic and supply a hap... more

The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, first published in the First Folio in 1623. Although it was listed as a comedy when it first appeared, some modern editors have relabeled the play a romance. Some critics, among them W. W. Lawrence (Lawrence, 9-13), consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays", because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comedic and supply a happy ending. Nevertheless, the play has occasionally been extremely popular, and enjoyed theatrical productions in various forms and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespeare performance history, beginning with David Garrick in his adaptation called Florizel and Perdita (first performed in 1784 and published in 1756), and again in the nineteenth century, when the third "pastoral" act was widely popular. In the second half of the twentieth century The Winter's Tale, in its entirety and drawn largely from the First... less