“‘Seeing is believing”: Action and Narration in The Old Wives Tale and

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I am content to drive away the time with an old wives winter’s tale. (98-9)2

Here we see the affinity of the offhand titles of the two plays; they both imply an idle and foolish tale to which you couldn’t give credence. Shakespeare, of course, has an extra level of meaning in his title; and when Mamilius, chief victim in the wintry tale, gives the play its ambiguous name, the passage seems to hark back to the first of Peele’s phrases just quoted.

“‘Seeing is believing”: Action and Narration in The Old Wives Tale and The Winter’s Tale”, in E.A.J. Honigmann (ed.), Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 79–93

ABSTRACT