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    The Winter’s Tale
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    The Winter’s Tale
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    The Winter’s Tale
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Winter’s Tale

    Written by William Shakespeare

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623.

    ''The Winter's Tale' is high fantasy, a tale to be told by the fire…The play belongs to the type known as "tragicomedy", but Shakespeare has separated the tragedy from the comedy. The first part has the same kind of tragic development as 'Othello'; the second part is pure idyllic comedy. 'The Winter's Tale' is a far better play to hear and see than to read; it needs the voice of the actor to give it life.'
    G.B. HARRISON, editor of texts for The Shakespeare Recording Society.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJan 6, 2011
    ISBN9780007423989
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

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    Reviews for The Winter’s Tale

    3.5/5

    654 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      In spite of not really understanding about half the dialog, this play moved me as none of the other comedies of Shakespeare have. I was so angry with Leontes! Cheering for Paulina! Horrified at the tragic aspects of the tale, and surprised at the twist in the end. I look forward to seeing this one performed.
    • 3/5
      Story of a jealous man (King) who destroys his life because of his paranoid jealousies that his wife is cheating on him. He rejects his wife and the daughter she has and he supposes his wife and daughter to be dead. He is all alone as a consequence of his jealousy and realizes his error.
    • 3/5
      Interestingly, despite being a rather conflicting mix of tragedy, humour, and romance, with a usual heapin' helpin' of coincidence, this one works better than the past two or three I've pounded through, but enjoyed very little.

      But seriously, what kind of king can afford to hang with his BFF for almost a year?

      Overall, one I consider a touch more slight than his better known plays, but I had to laugh at the unexpected bawdiness of the mention of dildos, orgasms, and the "jump her and thump her" lines. Shakespeare, you old dog!
    • 3/5
      I have drunk and seen the spider.

      One’s suspension of disbelief will be sorely tested here. The king of Sicily is a paranoid git. Was he always of this character or did he arrive at such by an untoward alignment of humors? Again, just go with it. The tyrant is convinced that his wife has been untrue. The king of Bohemia is the suspect. His wife is pregnant, a physical symbol of his being cuckolded. This is a comedy, right? He's allowed to fume and bellow, allowing a stage of fire and fury to persist through a trial and beyond with a flourish of Nixonian exactness .

      The accused flee and then the sunny Czech coast becomes the subsequent location as sixteen years have lapsed since the previous act, the interim allowing the child to have grown to a plot pivot. There’s a bear, a clown and several royals in disguise. There is an amazing of wooing where the natural character of the garden is discussed and explored. I was hoping for something akin to The Tempest and alas it didn’t happen.
    • 3/5
      This is another Shakespeare play I have read in anticipation of seeing it next weekend at The Globe, as I did a fortnight ago with Othello. However, I found this play to be nowhere near as enjoyable. The plot seems too thin and insubstantial in practice for five acts, and the atmosphere of fantasy does not work for me - this is considered one of the Bard's "problem plays", neither a true tragedy nor a comedy, though containing elements of both. Like Othello, it is marked by themes of jealousy and remorse, but nowhere near as vividly and convincingly for me.
    • 4/5
      It's the binding and illustrations that make this edition of The Winter's Tale special.
    • 5/5
      We weep, we dance, we shiver, we bake, we live, we die. This is the Ecclesiastes of the dramatic canon and I want it played at my funeral.
    • 3/5
      This is not one of Shakespeare's best plays. It seems like a mashup of Othello (insane jealously) and Much Ado about Nothing (characters running around in disguises). The beginning feels like it's started in the middle. Some important revelations take place off-stage, described by minor characters instead of enacted by the central characters. Shakespeare's finest works seem to drip with cliches because they're the source of those cliches. This one does not. The most famous line from this play may be the stage direction “Exit pursued by a bear.” Recommended only for completists.
    • 4/5
      Deeply paranoid, Leontes, the King of Sicilia, decides that his wife has been having an affair with the visiting King of Bohemia, and that the baby she carries has been fathered by the visitor. Leontes demands that his friend Camillo murder King Polixenes, but instead, Camillo flees Sicilia with the King. Since he can't take revenge on the man, Leontes punishes the Queen and the newborn child, who is taken to Bohemia and left to the elements. She is rescued by a poor shepherd, who raises and loves her as a daughter, and the local prince falls in love with her, which causes problems with his father.This play is a twofer- you get both a intense tragedy, along the lines of "Othello", then a romance. It's weird, because it's hard to transition from a king demanding that a newborn be burned alive to young love. For me, the first half, with the King's madness, was way more compelling.
    • 4/5
      I think this is as bipolar a play as I've ever read and I feel that I must give it two reviews to do it justice. I found Leontes in his green-eyed frenzy more disturbing than Othello. The Moor was an honest soldier subtly deceived. Leontes was an absolute monarch who went mad, roaring his diseased fancies in public, crushing dissent in those who knew better (with one exception), curable in the end only by the gods. (A regular Henry VIII, now that I think about it. ) The only person who stands up to him while he is in frenzy is the noblewoman Paulina, a great and unheralded creation, a role for Kathy Bates or Renee Zellweger.I liked the second half well enough with its bumpkins and moonstruck lovers. I loved Autolycus the vagabond, pickpocket, sharper, the last in Shakespeare's long line of sharp rogues and clever clowns. I've never read a more preposterous happy ending. I didn't mind too much. I wanted this play to end happily.
    • 2/5
      A tragedy that wanted to be a comedy. The Deus ex Machina of the ending (a statue coming to life -- that of a woman who died of grief and mortification at the hands of her husband) was a little absurd. And Hermione (reincarnated) embraces the bastard. What is up with that? A highly implausible story -- it would have made a much better tragedy. Leonates should have gotten his comeuppance.
    • 3/5
      King Leontes of Sicilia orders that his newborn female child be killed because he fears it is not his. However, Lord Antigonus takes her and abandons her in on the Bohemian coast. When King Leontes's wife is found innocent, he will have no other heir unless the daughter is found. Hermione, Leontes wife, is reported dead to her heartbroken husband. Sixteen years passed, while Perdita, the lost daughter, is being taken care of by a shepherd. News gets to the king that there is a girl with no parents. The relationship is confirmed and everyone rejoices. I found this book very hard to follow. Because this is fiction, it is hard to tell whether things are figurative or not. It is a quick read. The plot is good if you can understand it. I would only recommend this book to someone who likes reading.
    • 4/5
      "The Winter's Tale" has to be the best Shakespeare play that I'd never heard of... it was only thanks to trying to read his complete works that I stumbled across it.The play is one of his last and it shows, the story is tight and well-paced. It centers on the aftermath created by an extremely jealous king, who accuses his wife of sleeping with his childhood friend, a fellow king. Antics ensure (and of course disguises) and they are well-done in this play.This is definitely among by favorites by Shakespeare.
    • 4/5
      One of his most accessible works
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this play enough, but it certainly wasn't my favorite. I thought the plot was good. I thought the book raised interesting questions about faith and taking things at face value. I only really thought the writing was especially good in a couple of places, I found some of the characters a bit difficult to relate to. Thre's also one speculation about the title which I find interesting. At one point Hermione asks her son to tell a story and some people believe that this would be the story he'd have told. I also thought the play was a bit similar to Beauty and the Beast in that there seems to be points whre Leontes trusts no one yet by the end of the play it's everyone else, not himself, who have led to the play's conclusion. Overall, I enjoyed reading this play and I'm glad I did, it's just not one that stuck with me as much.
    • 4/5
      Classic Shakespeare romance.
    • 3/5
      The weakest Shakespeare I've read to date.