The Winter's Tale (Vol. 91) - B. J. Sokol (essay date 1994)
B. J. Sokol (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: Sokol, B. J. “Autolycus' Tale and The Winter's Tale: The Rogue in Shakespeare's Reparative Play.” In Art and Illusion in The Winter's Tale, pp. 167-82. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1994.
[In the following essay, Sokol maintains that Autolycus's roguery lends crucial support to the “reparative structure” of The Winter's Tale. According to Sokol, Shakespeare dramatized Autolycus in a non-moralistic fashion to demonstrate how “creative activity” emanates from the darker side of human nature.]
THE DRAMATISATION OF INWARDNESS: THE DARKER SIDE
No other simply isolated element of The Winter's Tale has produced wider critical disagreement than the role of Autolycus.1 A number of recent critics (surprisingly many) have condemned Autolycus morally; some have seen him as an abuser of ‘art’ deployed by Shakespeare to provide an...
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