This edition of 'The Winter's Tale' provides a newly edited text, an introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers.

Shakespeare's classic play explores the eternal themes of love and hate, mercy and justice, with parallel stories centred on the moneylender, Shylock, and the lovers, Portia and Bassanio. Shylock's angry insistence on the repayment of his debt from Bassanio ends in the Venetian courts where he demands his pound of flesh. Portia meanwhile, a wealthy young Venetian woman, must marry one of her many suitors. Her late father?s will has set the challenge...

Two new editions offering introductions and commentary on these well known plays. Also include history, context and staging information.

In their introduction to this play, the editors show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative.