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The Winter’s Tale : Romance, Art, and Belief

The Winter’s Tale : Romance, Art, and Belief. Art versus Nature: The Debate between Polixenes and Perdita.

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The Winter’s Tale : Romance, Art, and Belief

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  1. The Winter’s Tale:Romance, Art, and Belief

  2. Art versus Nature: The Debate between Polixenes and Perdita In the middle of the sheep-sheering feast, just before Autolycus enters, peddling his trinkets/ballads, Perdita hands out flowers to her guests, and we enter into an extended philosophical debate between Polixenes and Perdita over whether the art of grafting is natural or unnatural (and thus a form of bastardy): pp. 68-69; 4.4.77-108.

  3. The irony of this debate is that: • According to Perdita’s argument, she should not be allowed to marry Florizel. • According to Polixenes’s argument, Perdita should be allowed to marry Florizel. • According to Perdita’s argument, Florizel should marry her only for her beauty. • A and B • All of the above

  4. Making the Romance of Innocence • After the “fall” of the first half of the play, wherein mankind’s, and especially, womankind’s “sullied” nature is rediscovered by Leontes, “innocence” (literally in the character of Mamillius) is killed off. • It can never be reborn as “pure” innocence. • It can only be much recovered when the best of nature and opportune time ally with art/craft. • The result is not a bastard innocence, but it is “mixed,” in the same way the ending of the play mixes gain with loss, joy with sorrow: Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries, “Oh, thy mother, thy mother.” (p. 106, 5.2.52-55)

  5. Retelling a Winter’s Tale:Magic, Art, and Belief

  6. Act 5 re-invokes the idea of a “winter’s tale”: • “The oracle is fulfilled; the King’s daughter is found; such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it. . . . This news, which is called true, is so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.” (2nd Gentleman, 5.2.24-31) • “Like an old tale still.” (re: the news of Antigones being torn to pieces by a bear) (3rd Gentleman, 5.2.65) • “That she [Hermione] is living, / Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.” (Paulina, 5.3.115-118)

  7. How is the notion of a “winter’s tale” different at the end of the play than in its first half?

  8. Why is so much of the action of the final act (the discovery of Perdita’s identity and telling of Antigones’s death, with their accompanying “proofs”; the reconciliation between Leontes and Polixenes and Camillo; the reunion and assimilation into the Sicilian court of Perdita’s adopted father and brother, the Shepherd and his son) occur off-stage, narrated by anonymous “gentlemen”?

  9. The On-Stage Statue of Hermione: Do you think Shakespeare’s intention and the reaction of his audience at the time to the statue scene was to see the statue as • Just a very realistic piece of art? • The real-life Hermione pretending to be a statue? • A very realistic piece of art that was magically turned into a living human being? • Confusion over what exactly was happening. • None of the above.

  10. In the first act of the play, Paulina is accused by Leontes of witchcraft: • “Out / A mankind witch!” (Leontes, 2.3.65-66) • “I’ll ha’ thee burned” (Leontes, 2.3.111).

  11. In the last act of the play, the specter of witchcraft resurfaces: • “O there’s magic in thy [the statue’s] majesty, which has / My evils conjured to remembrance, and / From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, / Standing like stone with thee.” (Leontes, 5.3.38-42) • “Do not say ‘tis superstition that / I kneel [before the statue].” (Perdita, 5.3.43-44) • “It is required/ You do awake your faith; then, all stand still. / Or those that think it is unlawful business / I am about, let them depart.” (Paulina, 5.3.94-97) • “Start not; her actions shall be holy / As you hear my spell is lawful.” (Paulina, 5.3.104-105) • “If this by magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating.” (Leontes, 5.3.110-111).

  12. So what are we witnessing in the final scene with the statue? • An act of the art of witchcraft to transform and bring to life or make natural inanimate artifice. • An act of the power of faith in the nature of God’s grace to work miracles.

  13. Who is the most powerful female character we have seen represented in the plays we have read this quarter? • Kate in The Taming of the Shrew • The Duchess of York in Richard II • Portia in The Merchant of Venice • Gertrude in Hamlet • Paulina in The Winter’s Tale

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