SOURCE: Sokol, B. J. “Autolycus' Tale and The Winter's Tale: The Rogue in Shakespeare's Reparative Play.” In Art and Illusion in The Winter's Tale, pp. 167-82. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Sokol maintains that Autolycus's roguery lends crucial support to the “reparative structure” of The Winter's Tale. According to Sokol, Shakespeare dramatized Autolycus in a non-moralistic fashion to demonstrate how “creative activity” emanates from the darker side of human nature.

The Dramatisation of Inwardness: the Darker Side

No other simply isolated element of The Winter's Tale has produced wider critical disagreement than the role of Autolycus.¹ A number of recent critics (surprisingly many) have condemned Autolycus morally; some have seen him as an abuser of ‘art’ deployed by Shakespeare to provide an ‘inverse’ to a positive role for art in the play, while others have seen his role as a savoury tonic for...