The Old Wives' Tale (play)

The old Wives Tale, a dramatization by George Peele and printed in 1595, is an amiably ironic and exaggerated version of the popular romantic plays favored at the time. Although only the titles of most of these popular works have survived, they seem to be unrelated composites of popular romantic and fairytale motifs of the era. They were full of romantic inventions but devoid of moral content. The play has been criticized as a "confusing jumble of theatrical nonsense".

The Old Wives Tale uses the theatrical device of a play within a play which adds to the confusion engendered by its multiple plots. But Peels's version also was more carefully composed than the others. He was consummate in distilling the essence of all that was romantic, but he also was able to create a detachment from the purely romantic, achieving the effect that the audience became aware of their taste for the romance of the fairytale. Peels other plays produced a similar effect.