The Winter's Tale
In the second half of the 20th century, The Winter's Tale was often performed in its entirety, drawn largely from the First Folio text, with varying degrees of success.
Meanwhile, the queen gives birth to a girl, and her loyal friend Paulina takes the baby to the king, hoping that the sight of the child will soften his heart.
The Oracle states categorically that Hermione and Polixenes are innocent, that Camillo is an honest man, and that Leontes will have no heir until his lost daughter is found.
Leontes refuses to believe the oracle, but soon learns that his son Mamillius has died of a wasting sickness brought on by the accusations against his mother.
Antigonus, meanwhile, abandons the baby on the coast of Bohemia, reporting that Hermione appeared to him in a dream and bade him name the girl Perdita.
Polixenes refuses and reports to Camillo that his son, Prince Florizel, has fallen in love with a lowly shepherd girl, Perdita.
The meeting and reconciliation of the kings and princes is reported by gentlemen of the Sicilian court: how the Old Shepherd raised Perdita, how Antigonus met his end, how Leontes was overjoyed at being reunited with his daughter, and how he begged Polixenes for forgiveness.
The sight of his wife's form makes Leontes distraught, but then, to everyone's amazement, the statue shows signs of vitality: it is Hermione, miraculously restored to life—or simply having lived in seclusion with Paulina for the last sixteen years.
This distinctive feature violates the Classical Unities, a set of principles for dramatic tragedies that was introduced in 16th-century Italy based on the work of Aristotle.
There are changes in names, places, and minor plot details, but the largest changes lie in the survival and reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes (Greene's Pandosto) at the end of the play.
As in Pericles, he uses a chorus to advance the action in the manner of the naive dramatic tradition; the use of a bear in the scene on the Bohemian seashore is almost certainly indebted to Mucedorus,[3] a chivalric romance revived at court around 1610.
Eric Ives, the biographer of Anne Boleyn (1986),[4] believes that the play is meant to parallel the fall of that queen, who was beheaded on false charges of adultery on the orders of her husband Henry VIII in 1536.
"[6] In the late 18th century, Edmond Malone suggested that a "book" listed in the Stationers' Register on 22 May 1594, under the title "a Wynters nightes pastime", might have been Shakespeare's, though no copy of it is known.
[11] His mother is soon put on trial for treason and adultery – and his death is announced seconds after she is shown to have been faithful and Leontes's accusations unfounded.
Paulina seems convinced of Hermione's death, and Leontes' order to visit both bodies and see them interred is never called into question by later events in the play.
The pastoral genre is not known for precise verisimilitude, and, like the assortment of mixed references to ancient religion and contemporary religious figures and customs, this possible inaccuracy may have been included to underscore the play's fantastical and chimeric quality.
As Andrew Gurr puts it, Bohemia may have been given a seacoast "to flout geographical realism, and to underline the unreality of place in the play".
[20] A theory explaining the existence of the seacoast in Bohemia offered by C. H. Herford is suggested in Shakespeare's chosen title of the play.
A winter's tale is something associated with parents telling children stories of legends around a fireside: by using this title, it implies to the audience that these details should not be taken too seriously.
[22] In the novel Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson reference is made to the land of Seaboard Bohemia in the context of an obvious parody of Shakespeare's apparent liberties with geography in the play.
One comic moment in the play deals with a servant not realising that poetry featuring references to dildos is vulgar, presumably from not knowing what the word means.
[29] Notable stagings in the 19th century included those featuring John Philip Kemble in 1811, Samuel Phelps in 1845 and Charles Kean in an 1856 production that was famous for its elaborate sets and costumes.
In 1993 Adrian Noble won a Globe Award for Best Director for his Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation, which then was successfully brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1994.
[32] In 1997, a production at Boise State University was directed by Gordon Reinhart and starred Ira Amyx, James B. Fisk, Richard Klautsch and Randy Davison as Polixenes.
[33] In 2009, four separate productions were staged.Sam Mendes inaugurated his transatlantic "Bridge Project" directing The Winter's Tale with a cast featuring Simon Russell Beale (Leontes), Rebecca Hall (Hermione), Ethan Hawke (Autolycus), Sinéad Cusack (Paulina), and Morven Christie (Perdita).
[36] In 2013, the RSC staged a new production directed by Lucy Bailey, starring Jo Stone-Fewings as Leontes and Tara Fitzgerald as Hermione.
The production toured globally, including to France, Spain, the US and Russia, and was livestreamed around the world in a partnership with the BBC and Riverside Studios.
[40] In 2018, Theatre for a New Audience staged the play Off-Broadway, directed by Arin Arbus with Kelley Curran as Hermione and Anatol Yusef as Leontes.
It was produced by Jonathan Miller, directed by Jane Howell and starred Robert Stephens as Polixenes and Jeremy Kemp as Leontes.
[51] On 1 May 2016, BBC Radio 3's Drama on 3 broadcast an audio production directed by David Hunter, with Danny Sapani as Leontes, Eve Best as Hermione, Shaun Dooley as Polixenes, Karl Johnson as Camillo, Susan Jameson as Paulina, Paul Copley as the Shepherd and Faye Castelow as Perdita.
