This illuminating study of The Winter’s Tale in performance in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, contributes to understanding the growth during that time of high
critical esteem for The Winter’s Tale, now one of Shakespeare’s most frequently performed plays.
Writing about performance as a richly collaborative living art, and drawing upon her original interview material unavailable elsewhere, Dunbar learns from and gives voice to the work of
actors, directors, designers and other theatre professionals whose labor and interpretive discoveries have made it possible for audiences to experience the play’s multiple potentialities in
the theatre. The book’s last chapter, by Carol Chillington Rutter, contributes a richly layered and highly engaging comparative analysis of eight of the most important recent British
productions of the play.
Dunbar makes a significant contribution to understanding The Winter’s Tale which will be of great interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Shakespeare, to theatre lovers, and
to all involved in productions of the play.
