‘The Jealousy Comes from Nowhere’

Even as Shakespeare’s late masterpiece, The Winter’s Tale, continues to grow in critical esteem, New Yorkers have been able to see only five major productions of it over the past quarter-century, none of these on Broadway, where it was last staged in 1946. It returned to the Delacorte Theater as part of the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park this past July and August, directed by Daniel Sullivan, with Raúl Esparza and Lily Rabe starring in the lead roles of Leontes and his wife, Hermione. Playgoers may also remember Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish version that came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1995. It’s no surprise that The Winter’s Tale had long interested Bergman, for the play might well be subtitled Scenes from a Marriage—his 1973 miniseries exploring the decade-long disintegration of a relationship.In The Winter’s Tale, the marriage of Leontes and Hermione is under even greater pressure, with accusations of adultery, a battle over custody, the threat of an illegitimate child, the death of a young son distraught over his parents’ strife, and the abandonment of an infant girl. It’s an unusual focus, as Shakespeare rarely wrote about the tensions of married life, espec...