It has all the license
and charm of a fairytale [Arthur Symons]
At once a symbol
and a human being [E.M.W. Tillyard]
Florizel and Perdita re-enact
the marriage of Leontes and Hermione, but with better success [E.M.W. Tillyard]
The country life
is given the fullest force actuality [E.M.W. Tillyard]
If through Hermione
Shakespeare exposes contradictions in male attitudes to women, through Paulina he demystifies the stereotype of the scold [Bill Overton]
The ending of The Winter's Tale
is not...a vision of ultimate unity. The emphasis is not on the social group but on the individuals whose sufferings we have closely followed. [They] must salvage what they can [Stanley Wells]
A counter-cultural figure,
an outsider, a figure of music and sexuality [Marjorie Garber]
No character in the play
operates outside a power structure, often corrupted and in need of redemption and reform [Pete Bunten]
Shakespeare prioritises
apprehension over suspense [Samuel Taylor Coleridge]
Green-eyed monster
which doth mock the meat it feeds on [Othello]
Now is the winter
of our discontent [Richard III]
[The sheep-shearing scene] surpasses all
Shakespeare's earlier poetry of pastoral and romance [G Wilson Knight]
Shakespeare confronts the
potential epistemological tyranny of the rational and posits the marvellous as a means of overcoming this powerful force [Peter G Platt]
The first three acts are
consumed with the search for reason, logic and univocal interpretation [Peter G Platt]
Hermione's infidelity has become
a central truth in Leontes' view of reality...the alternative is nihilism...In this process Hermione will become utterly dehumanised
[Leontes] brings death into
a setting replete with warmth, life, and imminent birth [Peter G Platt]
Cleomenes and Dion...
seem out of place in Sicilia as they speak about their journey in the langauge of the marvellous [Peter G Platt]
The humour and irony
are rich here, for the entire play has exposed the potential falsehood of language [Peter G Platt]
Shakespeare has become
increasingly aware of the necessity of an audience to make his spectacle work its wonders [Peter G Platt]
Perdita is allowed to
grow up as part of the natural cycle, in a natural and nature-bound family [Rosalie Colie]
Silence, then, becomes
the final language, the langauge of love and forgiveness [Matchett]
The Pastoral Scene...
functions, basically and indisputably, as a contrast with life in the Sicilian court [Philip M Weinstein]
A balance between ideal youth
and realistic adulthood must be struck, one that welds past and present [Philip M Weinstein]
[Florizel] is Leontes
as he was not and should have been [Philip M Weinstein]
Shakespeare inverts
the potentially tragic material of his major source [Philip C McGuire]
His accusation is
one sentence, urged on by enjambement [Joe Nutt]
The act of betrayal
is as heinous here as the act of adultery [Joe Nutt]
The romances dramatise
a world subject to change and the irrational actions of humans [Joe Nutt]
His intemperate language
is also in marked contrast to Hermione's quiet reason [Joe Nutt]
Oracular pronouncements
are conventionally enigmatic. This one could not be more blunt [Joe Nutt]
[Antigonus is] a tool
of the divine will [Joe Nutt]
There is something suggestive
of an obsessive personality in his complete dependence on Paulina [Peter Malin]
There is a profound sense
of loss and change [Peter Malin]
Polixenes is an unattractive
character in Act IV [Peter Malin]
[Camillo's] motives are
essentially selfish [Peter Malin]
[Antigonus'] death, along with
that of Mamillius, haunts the play's positive resolution [Peter Malin]
The climax of her role,
her response to her mother's reanimation, is silent but steeped in emotion [Peter Malin]
[Perdita is] the agent
of reconciliation [Peter Malin]
Their mutual jealousy
is a far cry from the destructive passion of Leontes [Peter Malin]
The destructive power
of his jealousy is thrown into relief by the sexual rivalry of Mopsa and Dorcas, which revisits the theme in comic mode and in a minor key [Peter Malin]
Her forgiveness is made
explicit not in words but in her embracing him [Peter Malin]
As a princess raised
to be a shepherdess, Perdita is a symbolic embodiment of the best of both worlds [Peter Malin]
Ultimately the play seems to
endorse Polixenes's viewpoint, with its statue scene that represents a complex interaction of art...and nature [Peter Malin]
It owes as much to
Greek mythology and pagan fertility rituals as it does to any specific relationship with the official orthodoxy of Jacobean Protestanism [Peter Malin]
The play's structure is
partly based on the Christian patterning of sin, penance and redemption [Peter Malin]
Camillo is an old
rogue whom I can hardly forgive for his double treachery [Hartley Coleridge]
The impossibility of
reconciliation is passed by in silence, and Leontes busies himself in finding a husband for the aged and unattractive Paulina [Robert Bridges]
Bored, in fact,
with everything except poetry and poetical dreams [Lytton Strachey]
Pastoral is never to be mistaken
for a transcript of rustic life. Its significance resides not in any fidelity to the fact of the peasant but in its relation to the state of mind of the world-wearied courtier or scholar who writes it [E.K. Chambers]
The play is about
the process of social change in 17th century England [Charles Barber]
The morals of silence are as
unstable in The Winter's Tale as time itself. The eloquence of Hermione and Paulina contrasts with the cowardly silence of Leontes's courtiers [Juliet Dusinberre]
Time's glory
is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light [Rape of Lucrece]