SOURCE: “The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Tradition,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 4, Autumn 1963, pp. 537-98.

In the following essay, Bryant notes the indebtedness of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to the classical European and English pastoral traditions and argues that with this subtle dramatized commentary on appearance and reality Shakespeare brought freshness to the pastoral mode and transformed its hackneyed conventions.

It is curious that no appraiser or appreciator seems to have puzzled over the kinship of The Winter's Tale with the pastoral tradition. Most commentators tacitly assume the connection, then abandon it to court other features. Some explain the drama as tragicomedy, some as one of the “last plays”. Others see it against the background of Elizabethan thought. Still others, lately, have examined the grammar, the vocabulary, and the reverberations of the imagery. All these approaches are good, cogent, helpful; but the pastoral element has gone...