If Shakespeare's late drama, The Winter's Tale, does not quite seem a tragedy, or a comedy, or a tragicomedy—then what is it? This play has long been called a romance— but then what is that? In King Leontes of Sicilia’s world, complex human dramas play out in the form of vicious sexual jealousy; a spousal fate for which he thinks “death” too mild a word; and a young son ordered killed. Most shocking of all, the King’s newborn daughter is banished. Nearly two decades later, the main characters are reunited under very different circumstances, with the string of tragedies resolving itself in unexpected ways.  In the genre of romance, despondence gives way to elation, grief to joy, winter to spring— but at what human cost?