Reading Order
The Winter's Tale Reading Order
The Winter's Tale (c. 1610–1611) by William Shakespeare is one of the late romances — a play in two distinct halves separated by sixteen years. The first half is a tragedy: Leontes, King of Sicilia, is consumed by delusional jealousy that his wife Hermione has been unfaithful with his friend Polixenes; he imprisons Hermione, who gives birth in prison; the baby Perdita is exposed in Bohemia; Hermione appears to die; Mamillius, the young son, dies of grief; and Leontes's old friend Antigonus is famously killed by a bear ('Exit, pursued by a bear'). The second half is a comedy-romance: sixteen years later, Perdita (raised as a shepherd's daughter) is loved by Florizel (Polixenes's son); they flee to Sicilia; Perdita is revealed as Leontes's daughter; and in the play's most extraordinary coup de théâtre, a statue of Hermione is revealed to be Hermione herself — who has been living in secret for sixteen years and now returns to life. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most formally daring works: it combines tragedy and romance in a way that defies genre, it acknowledges in a speech by Time ('I that please some, try all') that sixteen years have passed in a play, and it ends with a resurrection that has been read as Christian (the Resurrection), psychological (the return of what was repressed), and theatrical (the magic of performance bringing the dead back to life).
Where to start
The Winter's Tale (c. 1610–1611) — any good scholarly edition. Best reading order: the Arden Third Series (ed. John Pitcher) is the standard text; reading The Tempest alongside is recommended as both are late romances written in the same period and share similar concerns with forgiveness, loss, and recovery.
Complete The Winter's Tale Book List
- 1Buy
The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare (Arden Third Series, ed. John Pitcher)·2010·The definitive modern scholarly edition — Pitcher's Arden text is the standard with the most comprehensive notes on the play's sources (particularly Pandosto by Robert Greene) and theatrical history - 2Buy
Pandosto
Robert Greene·1588·Shakespeare's primary source — Greene's prose romance tells the same story but with a darker ending (the King discovers that Perdita is his daughter and then commits suicide); reading the source reveals how Shakespeare transformed the ending toward redemption - 3Buy
The Tempest
William Shakespeare·1611·The companion late romance — written in the same period, The Tempest shares The Winter's Tale's concerns with lost daughters, the recovery of what was abandoned, and theatrical magic; the two plays are the most important late romances to read together - 4Buy
Galileo
Bertolt Brecht·1938·The play that shares The Winter's Tale's formal daring — Brecht's chronicle of Galileo's recantation, with its sixteen-year time jump and its sustained questioning of how ideology shapes knowledge, inhabits the same theatrical universe as the Time speech in The Winter's Tale - 5Buy
The Invention of Love
Tom Stoppard·1997·Stoppard's play about A.E. Housman that shares The Winter's Tale's structure of loss, time, and the impossible return — the old Housman meeting his young self parallels the structure of a play about lost time and recovered daughters - 6Buy
Gold
Geraldine McCaughrean·2004·A children's novel retelling The Winter's Tale for younger readers — one of the best retellings of the play's story in accessible form; useful for readers approaching the late romances for the first time
The Winter's Tale — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Winter's Tale about?
The Winter's Tale (c. 1610–1611) by William Shakespeare is a play in two halves. In the first half, Leontes King of Sicilia is consumed by irrational jealousy that his wife Hermione is having an affair with his friend Polixenes. He imprisons Hermione, has her baby Perdita abandoned in Bohemia, and Hermione appears to die. The son Mamillius dies of grief. In the second half — sixteen years later — Perdita (raised as a shepherd's daughter) falls in love with Polixenes's son Florizel. They flee to Sicilia, where Perdita is revealed as Leontes's long-lost daughter. In the play's climax, Paulina reveals what appears to be a statue of Hermione: it comes to life, and Hermione is revealed to have been living in secret for sixteen years, now reunited with Leontes.
What does 'exit pursued by a bear' mean in The Winter's Tale?
'Exit, pursued by a bear' is one of the most famous stage directions in all of Shakespeare — the moment when Antigonus, having left the baby Perdita on the coast of Bohemia as commanded, is chased off stage and (implicitly) killed by a bear. The stage direction is famously used as an example of what theatre can and cannot represent: how do you stage a bear chase? Elizabethan productions may have used a real bear from the bear-baiting pit next door to the Globe. Modern productions use various approaches — a person in a bear suit, a symbolic representation, or an offstage sound effect. The moment is both comic and horrifying: Antigonus is punished (he swore an oath to expose the baby) and simultaneously the play's tone shifts from the first half's tragedy toward the second half's romance. It is also the formal signal that we have arrived in Bohemia, the world of the second half.
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