I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

The Winter's Tale, so far as we have any knowledge, was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it is the last of the "Comedies," occupying pages 277 to 303 inclusive.

Malone found a memorandum in the Office Book of Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, which he gives (see Var. of 1821, vol. iii. p. 229) as follows:

"For the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and likewyse by mee on Mr. Hemmings his worde that there was nothing profane added or reformed, thogh the allowed booke was missinge, and therefore I returned it without a fee, this 19 of August, 1623."

Malone also discovered that Sir George Buck did not ob

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tain full possession of his office as Master of the Revels until August, 1610;* and he therefore conjectured that The Winter's Tale was originally licensed in the latter part of that year or the beginning of the next." This date is confirmed by the MS. Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, since discovered (see our ed. of Richard II. p. 13, and cf. M. N. D. p. 10), which contains the following reference to the acting of "the Winters Talle at the glob, 1611, the 15 of maye :"†

"Obserue ther howe Lyontes the kinge of Cicillia was overcom with Ielosy of his wife, with the kinge of Bohemia, his frind, that came to see him, and howe he contriued his death, and wold haue had his cup-berer to haue poisoned, [sic] who gaue the king of bohemia warning ther-of, & fled with him to bohemia / Remember also howe he sent to the Orakell of appollo, & the Aunswer of apollo that she was giltles, and that the king was Ielouse, &c, and howe Except the child was found Again that was loste, the kinge should die with-out yssue, for the child was caried into bohemia, & ther laid in a forrest, & brought vp by a sheppard. And the kinge of bohemia his sonn maried that wentch, & howe they fled in Cicillia to Leontes, and the sheppard hauing showed the letter of the nobleman by whom Leontes sent a [sic] was that child, and the Iewelles found about her. she was knowen to be leontes daughter, and was then 16 yers old.

Remember also the Rog. that cam in all tottered like coll pixci / and howe he feyned him sicke & to haue bin Robbed of all that he had, and how he cosoned the por man of all his money, and after cam to the shop sher‡ with a pedlers packe, & ther cosoned them Again of all ther money. And howe he changed apparrell with the kinge of

* The Stationers' Registers show, however, that he had practically the control of the office from the year 1607.

† We give the passage as printed in the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-76, p. 416.

That is, sheep-shearing.

bomia his sonn, and then howe he turned Courtiar, &c / beware of trustinge feined beggars or fawninge fellouse."

The following entry in the Accounts of the Revels, quoted by most of the editors, has been proved to be a forgery, like the similar entries concerning The Tempest (see our ed. p. 8), The Merchant of Venice (p. 19), and other of Shakespeare's plays :

The Kings
players.

The 5th of Nouember [1611]; A play called ye winters nightes Tayle.

The internal tests, metrical, æsthetic, and other, all tend to show that the play was one of the poet's last productions. Dowden (Shakspere Primer, p. 151), says of it: "The versification is that of Shakspere's latest group of plays; no fivemeasure lines are rhymed; run-on lines and double-endings are numerous. The tone and feeling of The Winter's Tale place it in the same period with The Tempest and Cymbeline; its breezy air is surely that which blew over Warwickshire fields upon Shakspere now returned to Stratford; its country lads and lasses, and their junketings, are those with which the poet had in a happy spirit renewed his acquaintance. This is perhaps the last complete play that Shakspere wrote."

It may be noted here that Ben Jonson has a little fling at The Winter's Tale in the Induction of his Bartholomew Fair, published in 1614: "If there be never a ServantMonster i' the fayre, who can helpe it, he sayes; nor a nest of Antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his playes,. like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The "antiques," or antics, are evidently the dancing Satyrs of iv. 4, as the “ servant-monster" is the Caliban of The Tempest (see our ed. of that play, p. 8).

The Winter's Tale is one of the most carefully printed plays in the folio, even the punctuation being exceptionally accurate. The style presents unusual difficulties, being more elliptical, involved, and perplexing than that of any other

work of Shakespeare's. Under the circumstances, as White remarks, "it is rather surprising that the text has come down to us in so pure a state; and the absolute incomprehensibility of one or two passages may safely be attributed to the attempt, on the part of the printers, to correct that which they thought corrupt in their copy, but which was only obscure."

II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT.

The story of The Winter's Tale is taken from Robert Greene's History of Dorastus and Fawnia, which appeared first in 1588, under the title of Pandosto, and passed through several editions. Shakespeare follows the novel in most particulars, but varies from it in a few of some importance. For instance, in the story as told by Greene, Bellaria (Hermione) dies upon hearing of the loss of her son; and Pandosto (Leontes) falls in love with his own daughter, and is finally seized with a kind of melancholy or madness, in which he kills himself. The poet appears to have changed the dénouement because he was writing a comedy, not a tragedy.

One of the minor incidents may possibly have been altered for another reason. In Pandosto the daughter of the king is cast adrift at sea in a rudderless boat. Collier suggests that this was changed in The Winter's Tale because in The Tem pest the same incident had already been used in the case of Prospero and Miranda. The two plays are undoubtedly of nearly the same date, but, as Gervinus observes, this alteration in the story does not prove that The Tempest was written first, but only indicates that the plan of both pieces was sketched at the same time.

We need hardly add that the poet's indebtedness to the novelist, as in so many other cases of the kind, is really insignificant. "Whatever the merits of Greene's work-and it is a good tale of its sort and its time, though clumsily and pedantically told they are altogether different in kind (we

will not consider the question of degree) from the merits. of Shakespeare. In characterization of personages the tale is notably coarse and commonplace, in thought arid and barren, and in language alternately meagre and inflated; whereas there are few more remarkable creations in all literature than Hermione, Perdita, Autolycus, Paulina, not to notice minor characters; and its teeming wealth of wisdom, and the daring and dainty beauty of its poetry, give the play a high place in the second rank of Shakespeare's works. Briefly, it is the old story over again: the dry stick that seems to bloom and blossom is but hidden by the leafy luxuriance and floral splendour of the plant that has been trained upon it" (White).

III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE PLAY.

[From Ulrici's "Shakspeare's Dramatic Art."*]

The general foundation and plan of the whole--the jealousy of Leontes, the seclusion of the Queen and the repentance of her husband, the young Prince's love for the exceedingly beautiful shepherdess, etc.—although unusual, are nevertheless in accordance with reality; the characters, also, are consistently developed, without sudden changes and psychological improbabilities. Individual features, however, are all the more fantastic. We have here the full sway of accident and caprice in the concatenation of events, circumstances, and relations; every thing is removed from common experience. Not only is Delphos spoken of as an island and Bohemia as a maritime country (local reality, therefore, disregarded), but the reality of time also is completely set aside, inasmuch as the Delphic oracle is made to exist contemporaneously with Russian emperors and the great painter Julio Romano; in fact, the heroic age and the times of chivalry, the ancient customs of mythical religion, and

*Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, by Dr. Hermann Ulrici; translated from the third German ed. by L. D. Schmitz (London, 1876), vol. ii. p. 30 fol.