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The Winter’s Tale

Strong, fluent and precise translation by Piotr Kamiński, accompanied by an incisive preface and commentary by Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk, with a beautiful book design by Maciej Buszewicz. The edition includes footnotes and the lists of Polish translations and productions of The Winter’s Tale.

In The Winter’s Tale a farcically jealous lover declares himself a prophet:
How blest am I
In my just censure, in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accursed
In being so blest! (2.1)
This sudden surge of Leontes’s supernatural powers seals the fate of his Queen. We can see her briefly when she cuddles her little son but soon afterwards the Sicilian oikos crumbles: their home, their family are all gone. From now on Hermione assumes her part in an ancient tragedy and the plot plunges into pathos. She defends herself with stunning dignity, goes into labour and childbirth, appears at court, and, finally, falls unconscious. Even her offstage death is complaint with ancient conventions which refuse to turn death into a spectacle.
Preface by Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk

Keywords: William Shakespeare, new translation of Shakespeare’s plays, critical edition, The Winter’s Tale.

See other publications from the series: Shakespeare. Critical edition »