Already at the age of fourteen, B planned “two super-productions” for his puppet theatre: Mozart's and Schikaneder's opera The Magic Flute and Shakespeare's fairy-tale drama The Winter's Tale; both projects collapsed (B, 1994a: 3). The former was realised in 1975, when B's pioneering screen version of the opera was broadcast by Swedish Television; the latter did not materialise until 1994, when his equally pioneering version of the play was performed at the Big Stage of Dramaten.

The reason is obvious. B's wife Ingrid, to whom he was extremely attached, was seriously ill; she died a little more than a year later. It is likely that the decision to direct The Winter's Tale with its resurrection of the dead Hermione at the end had to do with Ingrid's illness. After her death B both directly and indirectly, notably in his TV film Saraband, voiced the hope that he would reunite with her in after-life.

A closely related theme is found in The Winter's Tale, where Leontes in the latter part of the play searches for Hermione as Tamino searches for Pamina. Reminiscing about the situation when he was planning to do the play in his puppet theatre, B once remarked that “The Winter's Tale is about the death of Love, the survival of Love and the resurrection of Love. It was the resurrection that broke me” (B, 1994a: 38).