SOURCE: Studing, Richard. “Shakespeare's Bohemia Revisited: A Caveat.” Shakespeare Studies 15 (1982): 217-26.

In the following essay, Studing argues that Act IV of The Winter's Tale demonstrates that rural Bohemia is not a refuge from the vices of the court but rather a similarly corrupt world.

In approaching the pastoral scene in The Winter's Tale as an idyll and place of relief from the falseness and misery of courtly life, commentators have dwelled, generally and specifically, on the simplicity, naturalness, and pristine values of Bohemia. The entire country scene, with its trappings of shepherds and shepherdesses, sheep-shearing festival, dances, rustic foolery, and rustic lovemaking, has often been idealized as an Arcadia, an Eden of love, friendship, and good will. Edwin Greenlaw considers it to be “the most exquisite and satisfying pastoral in Elizabethan literature.” Much in the same spirit, G. Wilson Knight believes the Pastoral Scene “sums up and surpasses...