William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

The Winter’s Tale, originally grouped with the comedies and then with the late romances, is two Shakespeare plays in one, encompassing almost everything our poet could do: three acts of tense tragic drama rife with characteristically Shakespearean dark depth psychology that literally flowers into a pastoral comedy of young love and miraculous reunions, Othello shading into A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It also appears to come late enough in the oeuvre, generally seen as preceding The Tempest, that it feels summative, valedictory, the poet’s near-final statement on his art, his complex benediction on what Act 4’s somewhat anachronistic chorus calls “th’ argument of Time.”