The Winter's Tale The New Cambridge Shakespeare Series

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems and an extensive introduction. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Appendices include the theatrical practice of doubling.

Introduction: Genre and title; Iterative patterns: sameness with a difference; Leontes' jealousy in criticism and performance; 'Exit pursued by a bear'; The figure of Time; Act 5 and the triumphs of Time; The Winter's Tale's sense of an ending: happiness qualified; Date; Sources; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Supplementary notes; Textual analysis; Appendices: A. Simon Forman's notes on The Winter's Tale; B. Some doubling possibilities in The Winter's Tale; C. The Winter's Tale in performance: selected issues, scenes, and passages; D. The Winter's Tale: a select performance chronology; Reading list.

Susan Snyder was formerly a scholar in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a former Professor of English at Swarthmore College.
Deborah T. Curren-Aquino is Reader at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC.