ABSTRACT
William Shakespeare was both a tireless innovator and also a great theatrical re-inventer, a re-teller of both other people's stories and of his own, and in many of the plays which he wrote towards the end of his career it seems as if he is taking for granted the fact that he has already written his great tragedies, and is addressing himself to the question 'What is there beyond tragedy?' In his last plays, Shakespeare's rewriting of tragedy comes full circle. The Winter's Tale is the most graphic example of this. A play whose first two-and-a-half acts seem like a bleak re-run of Othello, with a jealous ruler killing his innocent wife whom he suspects of adultery, turns into a joyful fairy-tale of reconciliation and rebirth: statues come to life, impossible reunions take place between child and parent, husband and wife, friend and friend.
