Shakespere Enlgish Lit - Essay Example

The Winter’s Tale is defined as comedy, but the first three acts of the play are created through psychological drama, thus creating a problem with reconciling the play to the comedy genre. Much like Romeo and Juliet, which starts out with classic tells of the comedy, but ends like a tragedy, The Winter’s Tale is the reverse, seeming much like a drama or tragedy, but resolving with classic comedy aspects. Bloom and Gleed (2010) call the play a tragicomedy, thus the play is defined by both of these aspects of theater (p. ix). There are a great variety of familiar themes within The Winter’s Tale.

Gender identity, mistaken identity, and the patriarchal society lend to the dramatic aspects of the first three acts, the final two acts resolved through twists upon those themes. The play is based upon the novel Pandesto, which is sometimes referred to as Dorastus and Fawnia written by Robert Greene. The earliest edition of the play exists from 1588, with fourteen editions between that time and the general time in which the play was written. Hudson, in his commentary from 1880 suggests that the writer was rather wordy and filled his worked with an overabundance of Greek standards in his writing.

He says that “For it seems as if he could not write at all without overloading his pages with classical allusion, nor hit upon any thought so trite and commonplace, but that he must run it through a series of aphoristic sentences twisted out of Roman or Greek lore” (p. 132). Beginning in January 2009, actors from the UK and from the USA combined talents under the direction of Sam Mendes in order to create productions of The Winter’s Tale and The Cherry Orchard. This transatlantic project is intended to last for three years and stars Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, and Rebecca Hall from the UK, with Richard Easton, Josh Hamilton, and Ethan Hawke from the USA (BAM 2009).