The Winter’s Tale

1. The Winter’s Tale First lecture

2. Shakespeare’s greatest “romance” • Late in his career, Sh. wrote four plays that go in a new direction: what we now call the “romances.” • Not “romance” in the sense of “romantic,” “true romance” sorts of plays. • But romance in a generic sense, plays like the ancient Greek romances that deal with separation, long tracts of time and space, and finally the uniting of families and lovers. • And include strange, even unlikely, plot twists. • The Odyssey has been called the first romance. And there were a number of later prose romances. • Shakespeare’s Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest follow these patterns. • Officially they are comedies in that they end happily. • But all contain the material of tragedy. • The greatest of these four plays – I insist – is The Winter’s Tale. • The Tempest is better known, but WT may be richer.

3. And maybe his strangest play • Contains Shakespeare’s most bizarre stage direction: “Exit pursued by a bear.” • And his oddest scene setting: “The seacoast of Bohemia” • (Bohemia = the modern Czech Republic; no seacoast!) • A man’s sudden onset of jealousy for his pregnant wife. • And like all romances, seemingly improbable coincidences – though real life seems to insist on such things. • And at the same time, some wonderfully realistic characterization and great roles for actresses: Hermione, Paulina. • Even a brief role for a young boy. • Singing, dancing, clowning around in Act IV. Plot just seems to stop. • And finally, a “recognition scene” in which information that has been kept from the audience is suddenly revealed – • -- and is certainly the most daring scene Sh. ever wrote. (Can we give it away?) • Which makes demands on our belief – and we have to believe it. • What was lost is found, what was cast away is recovered, destroyed friendship is healed, young love is fulfilled. • And yet . . .

4. “Mythic” • Many critics have found the play mythic in a variety of ways. • The recovery of a loved one from the underworld, from death: Orpheus and Euridice, Ceres and Proserpina. • Perhaps mirroring the seasonal recovery of natural life from the death of winter. • The first three acts take place in winter (a world of tragedy). • And the fourth act celebrates spring time, youth, love (a world of comedy). • And certainly the play is about regeneration, both natural and moral. • There’s a strangely religious sense to the conclusion, I’ve often felt, as if the play is demanding that the audience accept something almost miraculous.

5. Dating, text, source,etc. • Simon Forman, an astrologer who functioned something like a psychiatrist in Jacobean London (I think we saw him represented in “Shakespeare in Love”), says he saw the play on May 15, 1611. • Recounts some of the plot, then takes away this moral: "Beware of trusting feigned beggars or fawning fellows." • So the play must have been written shortly before this performance. • Making it one of Shakespeare’s last plays (The Tempest was performed at court on 1 Nov. 1611). • The text exists only in the Folio of 1623. • Its source is a novel by Robert Greene called Pandosto (1588), which didn’t end happily at all. • The king’s wife really died (along with his son), and when he meets his daughter, he tries to seduce her. • Then after realizing who she is, he commits suicide.

6. “Ordinary life” in the play’s beginning • The little dialogue between Archidamus (from Bohemia) and Camillo (Sicily) is full of courtly compliment. • “We’ll not be able to entertain you half so well next summer as you’ve entertained us.” • “Oh please, it was our pleasure.” • And how splendid that these two kings, friends from boyhood, were finally able to get together. • And some compliment, and agreement, about what a fine boy Mamillius is. • All very courtly, friendly, ordinary. • Echoed by what follows in the attempt to get Polixenes to stay just a little longer – little jokes on both sides. • Particularly enlivened by Hermione’s wit: if he said he longed to see his son, we’d whack him away. • And I’ll let Leontes stay a month longer in Bohemia next summer. • Prisoner or guest – your choice, Polixenes! • And what their boyhood was like. • Very innocent jokes about the “temptations” of sexual married love. • And her teasing about when she spoke “to the purpose” before. • “Cram [us] with praise, and make [us]/ As fat as tame things.” • And of coures she is “fat” – nine months pregnant! • The effect of her stage image – and her rather sweet teasing of her husband?

7. So the effect of Leontes’ outbreak: • All the more shocking in the way it breaks in on the bantering mood. • And then comes into his conversation with Mamillius: “neat,” “calf,” “shoots.” • And then, in his “angling” spills over and infects the whole theater: • “And many a man there is, even at this present,/ Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm,/ That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence/ And his pond fished in by his next neighbor, by/ Sir Smile, his neighbor.” • Becomes nastily physical: no barricado for a belly . . .” • He’s clearly gone mad. But in a way that seems entirely reasonable to him. • Which is exactly what happens in sudden outbreaks of jealousy – there’s no need for an Iago. • Camillo tries to talk him out of it: “be cured/ Of this diseased opinion.” • But must finally seem to fall in with Leontes and agree to kill Polixenes. • The whole episode of course is stylized to fit the condensed character of theater. • But isn’t this the way marital splits can seem – at least to those looking on – sudden, crazy, unanticipated, making no sense at all?

8. Hermione and Mamillius: II.1 • Again a scene of utmost normality. • Like all Shakespeare’s kids, M. is smart, pert, rather independent. • The irony of his wanting to tell a sad tale, “best for winter.” • The man dwelling by a churchyard – living amongst the dead. • And the “pat” entrance of Leontes! • Mamillius snatched away. • Hermione’s shock: “sport?” • She responds temperately: “You, my lord,/ Do but mistake.” • And imagines “some ill planet reigns” (105). • No one in the entire court credits Leontes’ suspicions. • Antigonus: ll. 155ff.

9. The child “enfranchised” by “great nature” • The comic dilemma of what to do with a child born in prison. • The jailer is puzzled, for he has no warrant to allow the child out of the prison. • But Paulina assures him that the child was “prisoner to the womb” . . . • . . . and therefore “By law and process of great Nature thence/ Freed and enfranchised” (II.2.59-61). • Paulina is one tough cookie: “If I prove honey-mouthed, let my tongue blister . . .” • Her plan: ll. 37ff. • Which follows in the next scene. • Like Macbeth, Leontes cannot sleep. • Has he in some way violated Nature? • He imagines that giving Hermione “to the fire” might bring back some part of his sleep. • Leontes’ perverse interpretation of Mamillius’ illness: ll. 12ff.

10. Paulina’s big scene: II.3 • Says she comes to bring him sleep: her words are “medicinal as true.” • Leontes “knew she would” come to him. • She’s the only one to stand up to him. • “Good queen, my lord, Good queen, I say good queen . . .” • And commends the child for his blessing. • Does Leontes look on the child? • She curses anyone who would pick up the child “by that forced baseness/ Which he has put upon’t.” • So presumably no one touches the child. • Paulina’s demeanor here counters every (male-authored) conduct book for women of the period! • And she becomes the spokeswoman for Nature: the child resembles Leontes entirely: ll. 95-102. • “Good goddess Nature” • She won’t call Leontes “tyrant” but . . . • And only after she is off the stage does Antigonus dare to pick up the child.

11. The scene of Hermione’s “trial” • She points out that her testimony can scarcely be credited since she is accused of falsehood. • It’s simply “he said”/”she said” – except that everyone knows she is entirely right. • “My life stands in the level of your dreams.” • And her faith is in “powers divine” that she insists view and judge human affairs. (ll. 27ff). • And in the oracle of Apollo. • Apollo’s judgment! • And immediately another judgment. • And another! • Leontes vows his change of mind and repentance – all very simple – and confesses his plot with Camillo. • But this is a tragedy – and Paulina pronounces the effect: “I say she’s dead; I’ll swear it.” • And Leontes cannot expect repentance: • “Do not repent these things . . . Nothing but despair. A thousand knees/ Ten thousand years together, naked , fasting,/ Upon a barren mountain, and still winter/ In storm perpetual, could not move the gods/ To look that way thou wert.” • Some sins cannot be forgiven. • But the play is only half over.