SOURCE: "Ambition and Original Sin in The Winter's Tale," in Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition, Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 222-79.

In the excerpt below, Watson discusses the physical and spiritual reunification of the natural and artificial worlds of The Winter's Tale; including Perdita's rejection of the dead world of Sicily and her role in the redemption of Leontes' ambitious identity.

Redemption and the Bohemian Garden

Immediately after Leontes resigns himself and his country to wintry stagnation, the scene shifts to an entire new world. The first three lines after his despairing vow tell us that we are in wild Bohemia, under an open sky, and tossed by swiftly changing weather. The shift of locale from one country to another is only the geographic aspect of this scene's highly complex transition, which is an exhilarating but frightening release from physical, spiritual, and temporal claustrophobia. The forces of nature...