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- Jonathan Epstein as Leontes and Elizabeth Aspenlieder as Hermione in The Winter's Tale. Photo Kevin Sprague.
The Winter's Tale
is the finest play by Shakespeare which nobody knows. Form and content meet and marry in this play. Everything is focused in a concentrated and clear line. The poet had two dry runs before writing the tale.
Pericles, one of the most popular plays of the 17th century, is a rough-hewn rollicking tale which finds its heroine converting lechers and being lusted after by her own father. Next up, in the trial of romances, is
Cymbeline, a complex rambling play with too many resurrections. The rightness of the
The Winter's Taletakes us by surprise. The themes of the last plays: separation, fathers and daughters, emotional destruction and rebirthing, here seem to have found a shape which sears itself into the mind. The most played and latest of the romances,
The Tempest, can seem almost valedictory after
Winter's Tale.