Four of Shakespeare's late plays are customarily classified as romances. The term romance can have more than one meaning, however. One definition of a romance is an adventure story, but the adventure-the hero or heroine faces monsters, prisons, shipwrecks, fiendish villains, and other dangers-is only part of the enduring appeal of this genre*. For one thing the perils in a romance's world are not just physical but also psychological, often involving lost identities and unrelieved suffering.
At the same time, the romance offers reassurance by guaranteeing that the protagonists* will eventually be rewarded, having their identities and fortunes restored and reuniting with their families and lovers. Their spectacular trials are bearable because this happy ending is a certainty.
The Winter's Tale was written about 1610 and published for the first time in the 1623 Folio. In The Winter's Tale, as in Cymbeline, characters suffer great loss and pain and families are driven apart, but by the end most of what has been lost has been regained. This poignant romance revolves around the estrangement of Leontes, King of Sicilia, from his wife and daughter. In a sudden fit of jealousy Leontes becomes convinced that his wife, Hermione, has been conducting an affair with his friend Polixenes. Believing the daughter she bears is not his own, he orders the child to be abandoned abroad.
The first three acts deal with Leontes's jealousy, his persecution of Hermione, the death of his son, Mamillius, the loss of his daughter, Perdita, and the recognition of his error and subsequent repentance. In the middle of the play a speech by Time marks the change of fortunes that lead to the reconciliation and renewal of the final scene, with its spectacular revelation that Hermione, long thought dead, in fact still lives. Shakespeare borrowed the plot for The Winter's Tale from Pandosto, the Triumph of Time (1588), a romance in prose by English writer Robert Greene (Bentley).
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