ABSTRACT
From Florizel and Perdita. A Dramatic Pastoral, In Three Acts. Alter’d from The Winter’s Tale of Shakespeare, 1758; first performed 21 January 1756.
On the reception of Garrick’s adaptation see above, p. 18. One contemporary who approved of it without reservation was William Warburton, who wrote to Garrick on 12 June 1758: ‘As you know me to be less an idolizer of Shakespeare than yourself, you will less suspect me of compliment when I tell you that besides your giving an elegant form to a monstrous composition, you have in your additions written up to the best scenes in this play, so that you will easily imagine I read the “Reformed Winter’s Tale” with great pleasure. You have greatly improved a fine prologue, and have done what we preachers are so commonly thought unable to do-mend ourselves while we mend others.’ (The Private Correspondence of David Garrick, ed. James Boaden, 2 vols, 1831, I. p. 88).
