Book
The Winter’s Tale
First published 1623
Leontes, king of Sicilia, suddenly becomes convinced that his wife Hermione is having an affair with his friend Polixenes, king of Bohemia. His jealousy leads to imprisonment, a public trial and the abandonment of the infant Perdita, while the royal household is devastated by deaths Leontes cannot undo.
Sixteen years later the play shifts into pastoral Bohemia, where Perdita has grown up unaware of her birth and falls in love with Polixenes’s son Florizel. Their flight back to Sicilia opens the way to recognition and reconciliation. Shakespeare blends tragedy and romance in an intentionally anachronistic Europe shaped more by dynastic imagination than precise historical geography.
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