The Winter's Tale | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 29 pages of analysis & critique of The Winter's Tale.
This section contains 8,537 words
(approx. 29 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Barbara A. Mowat

SOURCE: "Rogues, Shepherds, and the Counterfeit Distressed: Texts and Infracontexts of The Winter's Tale 4.3," in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. XXII, 1994, pp. 58-76.

In the essay that follows, originally presented at the Shakespeare Association of America in 1991, Mowat explores act four, scene three of The Winter's Tale—where Autolycus is introducedas a dramatic moment in which the surface context and its "infracontexts" create a number of tensions that establish Autolycus as a rogue character.

As I look at a particular intertextual moment in The Winter's Tale (the scene in which we meet Autolycus), I begin by assuming that the first printing of the play in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio is a "text"—that is, dialogue initially crafted as a script for performance but nevertheless preserved for us as printed symbols, inked pages. I also assume that this moment of Autolycus's appearance...

(read more)

This section contains 8,537 words
(approx. 29 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Barbara A. Mowat
Copyrights
Gale
Barbara A. Mowat from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.