SOURCE: “‘Like an Old Tale Still’: Paulina, ‘Triple Hecate,’ and the Persephone Myth in The Winter's Tale,” in Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings in Western Literature, edited by Elizabeth T. Hayes, University Press of Florida, 1994, pp. 32-44.

In the following essay, Wolf examines parallels between the leading female characters in Shakespeare's drama The Winter's Tale and the Greek goddesses Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate.

It has long been recognized that the Persephone myth plays a role in The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's story of redemption, rebirth, and reconciliation. The earliest and most complete development of the idea was made by W. F. C. Wigston in 1884. He noted that Hermione, with the loss of Perdita, falls like the earth in winter into her death-sleep. She is restored to life at the return of her daughter who, like Persephone, is a lost child and is connected with the spring through the text...