Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
Reading progress update: I've read 1154 out of 1344 pages.
The Winter's Tale
The title of this play, which means something between old wives' tale and fairy tale and romance (in the older sense), shows that Shakespeare was well aware of the preposterous and silly nature of the material. Arguably the setting of "the coast of Bohemia" is another nod to this because the the term was a proverbial error used ironically - and if you're not Ben Jonson you probably think Shakespeare was well enough educated to know that Bohemia was land-locked.
Despite, therefore, it being foolish to take the play too seriously it still doesn't seem to work very well. The shift from tragic to comedic tone doesn't seem to work as well as the reverse, as exemplified by Romeo and Juliet, and the resurrection in the statue scene is irritating - leaving some tragedy would have suited better and the lack of any explanation of how it could have happened irks. Perhaps one is supposed to take the whole thing ironically, like the Scream movies? I think maybe someone should take this approach to a production.
The equally daft Pericles seems to work better and I think it's because it is much more uniform in tone - it's just silly and jolly through-out.