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The authoritative edition of The Winter's Tale from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.

Read Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance--and understand what every word means

One of Shakespeare's later plays, best described as a tragi-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter... Read Full Overview

This edition of The Winter's Tale is especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading... Read Full Overview

"A merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly," suggests a character from The Old Wives' Tale, a play by one of Shakespeare's lesser-known contemporaries. And indeed, Elizabethan audiences recognized a "winter's tale" as a fanciful story, rendered all the... Read Full Overview

Shakespeare's tale of two kings who are friends and rivals.

'The work of Shakespeare is virtually infinite' Jorge Luis Borges

The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most fully realized tragicomedy, noted for the richness and complexity of its poetry. Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realistic psychology and a keen commentary on the violence... Read Full Overview

The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics consider it to be one of Shakespeare's... Read Full Overview

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.

The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events,... Read Full Overview