The Winter's Tale (The New Cambridge Shakespeare)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: 2New Ed, 2007-03-08
EAN 9780521293730, ISBN10: 0521293731

Paperback, 308 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This edition provides a newly edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers. 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. Textual analysis, four appendices - including the theatrical practice of doubling, and a select chronology of performance history - and a reading list complete the edition.

'... The New Cambridge Shakespeare produces superb editions that rank with the Arden and the Oxford as the best in the business. This year's The Winter's Tale is no exception.' Studies in English Literature