Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale
    Audiobook12 minutes

    The Winter's Tale

    Written by William Shakespeare and Edith Nesbit

    Narrated by Josh Verbae

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The Winter's Tale follows two childhood friends: Leontes, King of Sicilia, and Polixenes, the King of Bohemia. Polixenes is visiting the kingdom of Sicilia and is enjoying catching up with his old friend. However, after nine months, Polixenes yearns to return to his own kingdom to tend to affairs and see his son.

    This edition is an adaptation of Shakespeare's eponymous comedy, narrated in plain modern English, capturing the very essence and key elements of the original Shakespeare's drama. Read in English, unabridged.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateFeb 16, 2018
    ISBN9781787244474
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

    More audiobooks from William Shakespeare

    Related to The Winter's Tale

    Related audiobooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Surviving Copies Of Shakespeare’s First Folio To Go On Show

      Mar 12, 2023

      Four hundred years ago, a small band of William Shakespeare’s loyal friends and fellow thespians embarked on the complicated challenge of bringing his complete works together in one bound volume. Whether it was an act of love and respect or a money-m

      3 min read

    • Article

      ENGLISH HOMES OLD & NEW

      Apr 6, 2022

      ENGLISH HOMES OLD & NEW
      7 min read

    • Article

      Shakespeare’s Rulers

      Apr 15, 2021

      Did Shakespeare have personal connections with the monarchs who reigned during his lifetime? And how much influence did they have over his work? Queen Elizabeth I was a noted lover of the theatre, and numerous private plays were performed for her in

      1 min read

    • Article

      Brush Up Your Shakespeare!

      Jan 5, 2023

      Maybe it’s because although Shakespeare as a writer is of course inimitable, the hundreds (if not thousands) of tribute acts in novel, movie, stage, short story and any number of other formats have been enriching the literary life of the English-spea

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Scott

      Aug 13, 2021

      Great Scott
      5 min read

    • Article

      Pick Of The Week

      Aug 31, 2022

      It would be satisfying to be able to identify the Alix Erskin whose seal was on a very pleasing 6¼in-high onion-shaped green-glass wine bottle with the date 1709, also sold by Lawrences. For a moment, I hoped that it might have been Sir Alexander Are

      1 min read

    • Article

      Stratford-UPON-AVON

      Sep 8, 2021

      YOU CAN’T GO anywhere in Stratford without being performed at. In the garden of Shakespeare’s birthplace three costumed performers accost visitors, asking them to name one of his plays. They then declaim a speech from memory for you. Guests pass thro

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stratford-UPON-AVON

      Sep 8, 2021

      YOU CAN’T GO anywhere in Stratford without being performed at. In the garden of Shakespeare’s birthplace three costumed performers accost visitors, asking them to name one of his plays. They then declaim a speech from memory for you. Guests pass thro

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Family Affair

      Jul 6, 2018

      A Family Affair
      5 min read

    • Article

      Singing For Supper

      Sep 5, 2023

      Italian opera was on the slide in London during the 1730s and Handel’s fortunes were in a tailspin. Fortunately, the composer had something up his sleeve. Back in 1718, he’d turned the biblical tale of Esther into an English masque to be played befor

      1 min read

    • Article

      From Parchment To Performance

      Apr 15, 2021

      In Shakespeare’s time, playwriting was a matter of both perspiration and inspiration. First he had to think up a story, which he would shape into a plot. Usually this meant he had to do a lot of fresh reading, because most of Shakespeare’s plays are

      4 min read

    • Article

      Antiquarian Horror

      Nov 24, 2021

      Antiquarian Horror
      7 min read

    • Article

      City GIRL

      Jun 7, 2023

      City GIRL
      11 min read

    • Article

      An Ode To Ancient Customs

      Oct 28, 2020

      THIS has been the most frustrating of years for those of us wanting to visit country houses. A magnificent spring coincided with lockdown, compelling would-be tourists to stay in their own homes rather than visit other people’s. We have been forced f

      7 min read

    • Article

      The King And The Playwright

      Apr 14, 2022

      The King And The Playwright
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Play’s The Thing

      Apr 15, 2021

      Entertainment in late medieval and Tudor London came in a variety of forms, including cockfighting, bearbaiting and even public executions. Plays at this time often had a religious theme or a moral at the end – such as the battle between good and evi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Inspiring Walter Scott

      Aug 14, 2021

      Inspiring Walter Scott
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Collectors’ Work Is Never Done

      Jun 2, 2021

      When Charles Sebag-Montefiore’s interest in Old Master paintings led to a wish to learn more about provenance and history, he began to buy early catalogues of collections. Soon after, in 1975, he, too, found his way to Cecil Court, where Ernest Selig

      1 min read

    • Article

      Samuel Pepys

      Sep 18, 2020

      Samuel Pepys
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Duke Of Lennox, 1574-1624

      Dec 10, 2022

      The Duke Of Lennox, 1574-1624
      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Winter's Tale

    3.5/5

    23 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      In spite of not really understanding about half the dialog, this play moved me as none of the other comedies of Shakespeare have. I was so angry with Leontes! Cheering for Paulina! Horrified at the tragic aspects of the tale, and surprised at the twist in the end. I look forward to seeing this one performed.
    • 3/5
      Story of a jealous man (King) who destroys his life because of his paranoid jealousies that his wife is cheating on him. He rejects his wife and the daughter she has and he supposes his wife and daughter to be dead. He is all alone as a consequence of his jealousy and realizes his error.
    • 3/5
      Interestingly, despite being a rather conflicting mix of tragedy, humour, and romance, with a usual heapin' helpin' of coincidence, this one works better than the past two or three I've pounded through, but enjoyed very little.

      But seriously, what kind of king can afford to hang with his BFF for almost a year?

      Overall, one I consider a touch more slight than his better known plays, but I had to laugh at the unexpected bawdiness of the mention of dildos, orgasms, and the "jump her and thump her" lines. Shakespeare, you old dog!
    • 3/5
      I have drunk and seen the spider.

      One’s suspension of disbelief will be sorely tested here. The king of Sicily is a paranoid git. Was he always of this character or did he arrive at such by an untoward alignment of humors? Again, just go with it. The tyrant is convinced that his wife has been untrue. The king of Bohemia is the suspect. His wife is pregnant, a physical symbol of his being cuckolded. This is a comedy, right? He's allowed to fume and bellow, allowing a stage of fire and fury to persist through a trial and beyond with a flourish of Nixonian exactness .

      The accused flee and then the sunny Czech coast becomes the subsequent location as sixteen years have lapsed since the previous act, the interim allowing the child to have grown to a plot pivot. There’s a bear, a clown and several royals in disguise. There is an amazing of wooing where the natural character of the garden is discussed and explored. I was hoping for something akin to The Tempest and alas it didn’t happen.
    • 3/5
      This is another Shakespeare play I have read in anticipation of seeing it next weekend at The Globe, as I did a fortnight ago with Othello. However, I found this play to be nowhere near as enjoyable. The plot seems too thin and insubstantial in practice for five acts, and the atmosphere of fantasy does not work for me - this is considered one of the Bard's "problem plays", neither a true tragedy nor a comedy, though containing elements of both. Like Othello, it is marked by themes of jealousy and remorse, but nowhere near as vividly and convincingly for me.
    • 4/5
      It's the binding and illustrations that make this edition of The Winter's Tale special.
    • 5/5
      We weep, we dance, we shiver, we bake, we live, we die. This is the Ecclesiastes of the dramatic canon and I want it played at my funeral.
    • 3/5
      This is not one of Shakespeare's best plays. It seems like a mashup of Othello (insane jealously) and Much Ado about Nothing (characters running around in disguises). The beginning feels like it's started in the middle. Some important revelations take place off-stage, described by minor characters instead of enacted by the central characters. Shakespeare's finest works seem to drip with cliches because they're the source of those cliches. This one does not. The most famous line from this play may be the stage direction “Exit pursued by a bear.” Recommended only for completists.
    • 2/5
      Let's be real here. You're a typical nerd on the internet and you only know of this play as the "exit, pursued by a bear" play. To be honest, after reading the whole thing, that's not really an unfair conception of it. It's just not very interesting outside that one detail. What with the prevalence of bear-baiting in Shakespeare's time they probably used a real bear and I'm envisioning this play basically being a set-piece spectacle revolving around getting to see a bear chase a dude on stage. No need for the rest of the play to be any good, you're going to sell tickets just based on that. So clearly that's the real reason for the bear thing. I read some nerd on tumblr proclaiming that this was an example of laziness or recklessness audacity on Shakespeare's part because he needed to get rid of Antigonus to set up his ending and couldn't think of any other way to remove the character from the story. But that's bullshit. Paulina and Camillo's marriage is like the third-most important marriage in the ending sequence. It's an off-hand matter covered in a couple of lines, that pays off nothing because we never gave a shit about either of those two characters' love lives up until that point. No, Shakespeare put that bear in there because he damn well wanted a bear.
    • 4/5
      Deeply paranoid, Leontes, the King of Sicilia, decides that his wife has been having an affair with the visiting King of Bohemia, and that the baby she carries has been fathered by the visitor. Leontes demands that his friend Camillo murder King Polixenes, but instead, Camillo flees Sicilia with the King. Since he can't take revenge on the man, Leontes punishes the Queen and the newborn child, who is taken to Bohemia and left to the elements. She is rescued by a poor shepherd, who raises and loves her as a daughter, and the local prince falls in love with her, which causes problems with his father.This play is a twofer- you get both a intense tragedy, along the lines of "Othello", then a romance. It's weird, because it's hard to transition from a king demanding that a newborn be burned alive to young love. For me, the first half, with the King's madness, was way more compelling.
    • 4/5
      I think this is as bipolar a play as I've ever read and I feel that I must give it two reviews to do it justice. I found Leontes in his green-eyed frenzy more disturbing than Othello. The Moor was an honest soldier subtly deceived. Leontes was an absolute monarch who went mad, roaring his diseased fancies in public, crushing dissent in those who knew better (with one exception), curable in the end only by the gods. (A regular Henry VIII, now that I think about it. ) The only person who stands up to him while he is in frenzy is the noblewoman Paulina, a great and unheralded creation, a role for Kathy Bates or Renee Zellweger.I liked the second half well enough with its bumpkins and moonstruck lovers. I loved Autolycus the vagabond, pickpocket, sharper, the last in Shakespeare's long line of sharp rogues and clever clowns. I've never read a more preposterous happy ending. I didn't mind too much. I wanted this play to end happily.
    • 2/5
      A tragedy that wanted to be a comedy. The Deus ex Machina of the ending (a statue coming to life -- that of a woman who died of grief and mortification at the hands of her husband) was a little absurd. And Hermione (reincarnated) embraces the bastard. What is up with that? A highly implausible story -- it would have made a much better tragedy. Leonates should have gotten his comeuppance.
    • 3/5
      King Leontes of Sicilia orders that his newborn female child be killed because he fears it is not his. However, Lord Antigonus takes her and abandons her in on the Bohemian coast. When King Leontes's wife is found innocent, he will have no other heir unless the daughter is found. Hermione, Leontes wife, is reported dead to her heartbroken husband. Sixteen years passed, while Perdita, the lost daughter, is being taken care of by a shepherd. News gets to the king that there is a girl with no parents. The relationship is confirmed and everyone rejoices. I found this book very hard to follow. Because this is fiction, it is hard to tell whether things are figurative or not. It is a quick read. The plot is good if you can understand it. I would only recommend this book to someone who likes reading.
    • 4/5
      "The Winter's Tale" has to be the best Shakespeare play that I'd never heard of... it was only thanks to trying to read his complete works that I stumbled across it.The play is one of his last and it shows, the story is tight and well-paced. It centers on the aftermath created by an extremely jealous king, who accuses his wife of sleeping with his childhood friend, a fellow king. Antics ensure (and of course disguises) and they are well-done in this play.This is definitely among by favorites by Shakespeare.
    • 5/5
      It was more than thirty years since I had read this, one of the slightly less will-known of Shakespeare's plays. back then I was reading it slightly under duress as it was one of the set texts in my BA English course, and in my petulant way I took against it. That, I now appreciate, was a demonstration of poor judgement, though I take some comfort from knowing that I was not alone in this.Perhaps fittingly, the earliest surviving text for this play in the 1623 Folio edition, though we know from other contemporary records that it was performed in 1611. The point about the Folio edition is that that collection represented the first attempt to classify Shakespeare's plays, and within the Folio this play was placed at the end of the more obviously comic plays. For, although there are some amusing scenes, and although the last two acts are much lighter in tone, there are some very dark undertones throughout the play.Now best known for the legendary stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear", the play displays some very bleak themes, certainly very far removed from those that one would associate with comedy, even Shakespearean comedy!The play opens with Leontes, King of Sicilia, expounding upon how marvellous it has been for Polixenes, King of Bohemia, to be visiting, and beseeching him to stay a bit longer. Polixenes declines, pleading responsibilities of state. Leontes then asks Hermione, his wife, to help to persuade the reluctant Polixenes. As a true gentleman, Polixenes feels unable to deny Hermione, and agrees to stay for a little longer. At some point a hitherto hidden canker [the "green-eyed monster" from Othello (probably written some eight years previously)] erupts and Leontes's mind is contorted with a sudden jealousy, seeing Polixenes's decision to stay as proof of an affair with Hermione. Although his courtiers (including Camillo , his lifelong counsellor) argue on her behalf, Leontes becomes increasingly convinced of his wife's infidelity. So, not too many laughs there, then!Shakespeare tended to respect the Aristotlean unities (time, place and action) but here he really cuts loose. Not only does he allow sixteen years to pass in the blinking of an eye between acts; he also allows for a complete transformation of Leontes's character. But so what? The play works - as always, the richness of the language allows the reader completely to suspend their disbelief. Not his finest work, but far from his weakest (which isn't exactly weak anyway!).
    • 3/5
      Exit, pursued by a bear.This is the most famous stage direction not only in Shakespeare, but probably in all of theater. Indeed, it is likely all that most people are familiar with from The Winter’s Tale. That was the case with me prior to this spring. This was the last play we read for my Shakespeare course, and the only romance (or serio-comedy). It was also the one I was the least familiar with, except for maybe Richard II.Some Scholars read The Winter’s Tale as Othello in reverse, or Othello with a happy ending, which makes sense given the theme of jealousy and how it destroys Othello and Desdemona’s and Leontes and Hermione’s marriages. But I also see it as being a bit like King Lear in reverse, especially in regards to how Shakespeare used his source material. King Lear was a historical romance that he turned into a tragedy; The Winter's Tale, a tragedy he turned into a romance. Lear is tragic nearly from the beginning, although the appearance of Lear with Cordelia’s body would have been a grisly twist for Renaissance audiences. The transformation of The Winter's Tale into a romance involves a more marked change of tone. The first three and a half acts are entirely in the tragic mode, but with the removal of the action to the countryside, comic elements begin impinging on the plot, with the appearances of the rustic clown figure and of the bear, which is both an instrument of divine justice and a hilariously random plot device.The Winter's Tale is not Shakespeare’s shortest play, but it felt very brief to me, partially because I was speed-reading it for class, partially because it covers such an extended period of time: seventeen years! There are also so many characters that some of them are frighteningly underdeveloped; Florizel in particular is little more than a cipher, just a necessary link between Perdita and Polixines. But all the female characters are strong and feisty, Paulina in particular.Parts of this play are very, very silly—I didn’t find the comic characters (such as the clownish shepherd’s son and the knavish Autolycus) funny at all—but there are some good things here. The opening scene, in which Leontes begins suspecting his wife of adultery, caused me to start thinking like a director. How should Hermione and Polixines's interactions be staged? Make them too affectionate and the audience might believe them lovers, too; make them too reserved and there won’’t be anything at all for Leontes to base his suspicion on. I didn’t get around to watching the BBC video of this play, as I had planned, so I’m not sure yet how they handled this.Later, the play develops into a discourse on art vs. nature and the relative value of hybrids. In Act IV scene 4, Perdita expresses disdain for carnations and gillyvors because they are “nature's bastards,” aka hybrids. This is ironic, because Perdita is (seemingly) engaging in an act of social hybridization via her romance with Folorizel. At the same time, she is herself a hybrid, though she does not know it: she was born in the court and has been raised in the country. Polixines counters that hybrids are not unnatural, but rather the marrying of natural and artificial means to create something beautiful and new. This idea is borne out by the least scene when Hermione comes to life: she is presented as being at once a statue and a living, breathing person.If Stephen Orgel’s hack job on Macbeth is the worst introduction in The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, France E. Dolan’s take on The Winter's Tale is unquestionably the best. I’d like to close this review with a quote from her:Many striking elements of The Winter's Tale are unique to Shakespeare’s vision: the bear, the appearance of Time as a character, Hermione’s sixteen-year absence, the sea sickness that prevents Autolycus from making the shepherd (and his story) known to Florizel, a statue that comes to life, Paulina’s sudden remarriage. These improbabilities, which might be summed up in the notorious stage direction ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ (III.3.57 s.d.), make it hard for some people to take this play seriously. But perhaps what is most unlikely, but also most moving, is not that a bear will turn up out of nowhere and eat you—which is one way of dramatizing the unexpected assaults of daily life—but that the bear does not eat the baby on whom hope depends; not that one is betrayed or aggrieved, but that one goes on; not that we grow wrinkled, but that love can be renewed and sustained, and that forgiveness can attend a process of loss.Mmm. That’s lovely, both in phrasing and in meaning. The Bard himself might be pleased to put his name to it.
    • 4/5
      One of his most accessible works
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this play enough, but it certainly wasn't my favorite. I thought the plot was good. I thought the book raised interesting questions about faith and taking things at face value. I only really thought the writing was especially good in a couple of places, I found some of the characters a bit difficult to relate to. Thre's also one speculation about the title which I find interesting. At one point Hermione asks her son to tell a story and some people believe that this would be the story he'd have told. I also thought the play was a bit similar to Beauty and the Beast in that there seems to be points whre Leontes trusts no one yet by the end of the play it's everyone else, not himself, who have led to the play's conclusion. Overall, I enjoyed reading this play and I'm glad I did, it's just not one that stuck with me as much.
    • 4/5
      Classic Shakespeare romance.
    • 2/5
      I listened to the audio version of this Shakespeare play a year ago and just now noticed that I didn't add it to my Library Thing list of books. So I'm adding it belatedly. Because of the passage of time, it's plot isn't so fresh in my mind. I do recall that it is unique for Shakespeare in that the audience is misled into believing something that is later shown to not be true. The story contains an example of irrational jealousy which is certainly not unique. The story includes an incredible...more I listened to the audio version of this Shakespeare play a year ago and just now noticed that I didn't add it to my Goodreads list of books. So I'm adding it belatedly. Because of the passage of time, it's plot isn't so fresh in my mind. I do recall that it is unique for Shakespeare in that the audience is misled into believing something that is later shown to not be true. The story contains an example of irrational jealousy which is certainly not unique. The story includes an incredible second chance to correct old wrongs. The story even includes a bear (that makes a brief appearance on stage) and a ship wreck (not on stage). The closing act has to be a significant experience to witness in a live production.. Read in December, 2007
    • 3/5
      The weakest Shakespeare I've read to date.