Winter's Tale

I went to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale yesterday as part of the Globe's international season (it was performed in Yoruba, a West African language - and it was a great performance). I've always wondered why that play is called The Winter's Tale, since winter doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it, but it seems that Shakespeare's audiences of the early 1600s would have understood the 'winter' of a winter's tale (or winter tale - both forms are in the OED) to refer to 'an idle tale' (OED definition) in the sense a light-hearted folk tale, and not necessarily true. In this interesting and erudite article, Germaine Greer says "an old wives' tale is the same thing as a winter's tale". In the 1590s the playwright George Peele wrote a popular play called The Old Wives' Tale and in it one of the characters says "a merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly".