The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare creates many topics for discussion throughout his play, The Winter's Tale. For many of these themes, multiple viewpoints can be derived from the thoughts, words, and actions of the characters in the play. The reasoning for Shakespeare's title is indeed one of the aforementioned topics.

Firstly, the title helps to set the stage for which the play takes place. Numerous references hint to the fact that the play is staged mostly during the winter season or close to it. In act II, scene I, Mamillius tells Hermione that he will tell her a sad tale because, "A sad tale's best for winter." As the words of Mamillius, these are innocent enough and give the audience the impression that the season is winter. The seasonal setting of winter is reaffirmed later in the play during the discussion that takes place between Perdita and Polixenes in act IV, scene IV. Polixenes declares, "Shepherdess- a fair one are you- well you fit our ages with flowers of winter." Further discussion between them suggests that it may not be winter yet, but is getting very close to it. Although these passages and others show that the title is cleverly used to introduce to us the physical setting of the play, I believe that the purpose of the title does not stop there. In fact, I believe that it goes well beyond this simple understanding of the physical stage into a more complex reference to the mental setting of the play.

As I said before, the title is a topic that contains more than one meaning. Shakespeare was clever with his usage of this title. We must closely examine the words of each of his characters to find the underlying meaning that Shakespeare hid with...

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...ason, it justly deserves its title. The ending closes the play very effectively because it brings an end to many of the sorrows of the characters, and thereby ends this tale of sadness. For when there is no more sadness, then the winter's tale has ended.

I think that Shakespeare intended on leaving some topics such as the reasoning for this title open to the interpretation of the audience. He may have done this so that it became not only a play to read or to watch, but one to think about and to come to certain conclusions on your own without the help of the players. If that was indeed his intention, he did well to make me closely examine The Winter's Tale and to see the different possibilities for the purpose of its title. I believe that his title was an allusion to both of my previous arguments, and was effective at capturing the whole atmosphere of the play.