The Winter's Tale
Part of The New Cambridge Shakespeare
- Real Author: William Shakespeare
- Editors:
- Susan Snyder
- Deborah T. Curren-Aquino
- Date Published: April 2007
- availability: In stock
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521293730
Paperback
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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.
Read more- Details the stage history of the play alongside helpful critical commentary throughout
- Contains thirty illustrations, including photographs of recent productions
- Includes four appendices - including a select chronology of performance history - and a detailed reading list
Reviews & endorsements
"Aimed at a more scholarly audience, 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. Edited by the late Susan Snyder and Deborah T. Curren-Aquino, this edition has a lucid and intelligent introduction that covers all of the crucial elements of this complicated late play: genre; Leontes’ jealousy; the bear; Time; act V and the ending. There is also a fascinating discussion of the revision theory—Forman did not mention the statue scene in his 1611 account of the play, after all—but the edition decides against the theory, in spite of Snyder’s having made the most eloquent case for it in 2002. There is a very useful discussion of sources, the notes to the play are exemplary, and the Selected Reading list is both excellent and up-to-date. Although the appendix concentrates on performance issues (Forman’s notes on the play, doubling possibilities, key staging choices, a performance chronology), the edition is notable for its blend of textual and performance discussions. Especially effective is the decision to match photographs of the play in performance with the thematic issues under discussion. The visual variations on the statue scene are especially welcome and will be a boon in the classroom. Finally, although it has become fashionable in recent years for critics, editors, and directors to darken the ending, this edition opts for ambiguity rather than pessimism and seems truer to The Winter’s Tale’s hybrid, tragicomic spirit as a result."
-Studies in English Literature, Spring 2008Customer reviews
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×Product details
- Date Published: April 2007
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521293730
- length: 306 pages
- dimensions: 228 x 152 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.505kg
- contains: 30 b/w illus.
- availability: In stock
Table of Contents
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.Instructors have used or reviewed this title for the following courses
- Senior Seminar: Shakespeare's Romances
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