Page:Winter's Tale (1918) Yale.djvu/143



The Winter's Tale was first 'allowed of,' or officially approved for performance, by Sir George Buck, who assumed office as Master of the Revels in 1610; consequently, although Buck did license plays before taking office, we may reasonably assume that it was not written previous to that year. Yet it was already on the stage by May 15, 1611, for a Dr. Simon Forman saw it acted on that date and has left a written record of the fact with an analysis of the plot. The dance of twelve satyrs in IV. iv. was probably suggested by a similar dance of satyrs in Ben Jonson's Masque of Oberon, first acted on the opening day of January, 1611. It seems practically certain, therefore, that the play was finished and first staged in the spring of 1611. It was for several years following a favorite at court, and in 1613 was acted with several other Shakespearean dramas before the Prince Palatine and his bride. No Quarto editions of it exist; apparently it first appeared in print in the Folio of 1623.

After Shakespeare's death the play, despite its beauty, was unpopular and almost unnoticed for over a century, more so than many of the author's other works. Certain fantastic qualities in it—the seacoast of Bohemia, a country which for centuries had no seacoast, and the sixteen-year interval between the third and fourth acts—jarred on the new age, an age which was more fastidious in such matters than the imaginative Elizabethans had been.

In 1741, however, The Winter's Tale—'not acted 100 years,' according to the historian Genest—was revived at Goodman's Fields, and the following year at the more famous theatre of Covent Garden. Soon afterward several adaptations of parts of it were