The Winter’s Tale – Wordsworth Classics (Paperback) William Shakespeare (author), Professor Cedric Watts (author of introduction and notes,editor), Dr Keith Carabine (series editor)

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, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leontes’ murderous jealousy and Perdita’s love-relationship with Florizel are eloquently intense. In the theatre, The Winter’s Tale often proves to be diversely entertaining and deeply moving.