The Winter's Tale

William Shakespeare

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1623

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Summary

Background

Acts Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Critical Context: The Shakespearean Canon

When the First Folio, the first official printing of William Shakespeare’s plays, was published in 1623, the plays were divided into three genres: comedy, tragedy, and history. For hundreds of years, Shakespearean scholars have debated these classifications and proposed more specific genres, such as the problem play. Though scholars also debate the specific characteristics of a Shakespearean problem play, plays within this genre are typically characterized by their combination of comedy and tragedy as well as their focus on a morally relevant issue. Many consider The Winter’s Tale to be a problem play, as the first three acts focus on tragedy and the last two on comedy. It explores the anguish and growth of its protagonist Leontes, much like Shakespeare’s tragedies, yet concludes with a marriage like many of his comedies.

The Winter’s Tale is also considered to fall within the genre of Shakespeare’s late romances, a series of plays written toward the end of his life that often combine comedy and tragedy. Though the exact dates of most Shakespeare plays are unknown, it is assumed The Winter’s Tale—along with plays like The Tempest and Cymbeline—is one of the last plays he wrote. Biographical knowledge of Shakespeare is also limited, yet his late romances were written well into his fame, along with personal struggles such as the death of his son Hamnet and his likely retirement from playwriting. These plays focus on the rewarding of virtue, yet have endings that are more melancholic than earlier works, like the uncertainty of Hermione’s forgiveness of Leontes at the end of The Winter’s Tale.

Sociohistorical Context: Gender and Family in Jacobean England

Though The Winter’s Tale is set long before the Jacobean era of the play’s first performance (or the Elizabethan era in which Shakespeare’s source text, Pandosto, was published) the conventions of Shakespeare’s time still bleed into the play and influence how its characters act. Marriage was seen as a goal for the people of Jacobean England, as it continued the species and thus promoted a “natural order” of society; furthermore, Shakespeare’s comedies have happy endings that involve marriage. However, the common law of coverture meant married women of the time had few rights, their personhood and property being merged with those of their husbands. Not only were legal restrictions placed upon women, but stereotypes surrounded them and their behavior. In The Winter’s Tale, Leontes believes the contemporary stereotype that it is in women’s “nature” to be unfaithful and untruthful, which leads him to assume his wife Hermione had an affair and dismiss women who try to tell him the truth.

For families in 17th-century England, gender roles were a given, with a wife’s main duty—especially in noble families—being to give birth to a male heir for her husband. Patrilineal inheritance is crucial to The Winter’s Tale, as Leontes’s distrust of his wife leads him to believe their unborn baby is not his. He banishes the baby and frequently rants about how most men are cuckolded by their wives, a fear tied to patrilineal inheritance. A prophecy in the play states that, due to Leontes’s cruel and selfish actions, he will not have an heir until his daughter is returned; his actions cause the death of his son and heir Mamillius. The Winter’s Tale’s other king, Polixenes, is also concerned with the continuation of his bloodline and forbids his heir from marrying a woman he believes to be a shepherd’s daughter, as he does not want their blood “tainted” by someone of lower birth. Other classist, patriarchal conventions of the 17th century make their way into The Winter’s Tale, reflecting the morals espoused by Shakespeare and his contemporary audience.