SOURCE: Weinstein, Philip M. “An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale.” Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 2 (spring 1971): 97-109.

In the following essay, Weinstein discusses the contradictory conceptions of pastoral in The Winter's Tale, noting in particular that the play highlights the theme of regeneration as well as the motifs of death and decay.

                                        Did you not name a tempest, A birth and death? 

(Pericles V. iii. 33-34)

They looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed. 

(The Winter's Tale V. ii. 14-15)

As is well known, the Pastoral Scene in The Winter's Tale functions, basically and indisputably, as a contrast with life in the Sicilian court. And this purpose is so well achieved, the sense of rebirth so strong, that E. M. W. Tillyard has written: “Now the latest plays aim at a complete regeneration; at a melting down of the old vessel and a...