The Winter's Tale
How we can make sense of a play that veers from tragedy to comedy and stretches credulity in its conclusion? That's the topic for this fifth Approaching Shakespeare lecture on The Winter's Tale.
One of Shakespeare's last plays, The Winter's Tale (1611) splices tragedy and comedy to audacious effect: in this lecture Smith tries to think about why, and to what effect. And what is going on with that most famous of stage directions, 'exit pursued by a bear'? Using the sources to clarify Shakespeare's technique, this lecture argues that the play is an experiment, which has had some very successful recent stage revivals.
Date Published:
9 November 2010
Writer:
Source:
Contributors:
Emma Smith
In Collection(s):
William Shakespeare, Questioning Genre
Keywords:
Key Stage 5, lesson, Teaching, #greatwriters, theatre, play, language, english, literature, criticism, shakespeare
Cite:
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare at https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ via https://dev.writersinspire.it.ox.ac.uk/content/winters-tale. Published on 09 November 2010. Accessed on 15 May 2026.
If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: The Winter's Tale (https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/) by William Shakespeare, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).
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