The Winter

1
The Winters Tale

• First lecture

2
Shakespeares 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.
  
• Shakespeares Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winters
  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 Winters Tale.
• The Tempest is better known, but WT may be
  richer.

3
And maybe his strangest play

• Contains Shakespeares 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 mans 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.
• Theres a strangely religious sense to the
  conclusion, Ive 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 Shakespeares 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 didnt end happily at all.
  
• The kings 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 plays beginning

• The little dialogue between Archidamus (from
  Bohemia) and Camillo (Sicily) is full of courtly
  compliment.
• Well not be able to entertain you half so well
  next summer as youve 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 Hermiones wit if he
  said he longed to see his son, wed whack him
  away.
• And Ill 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
  ins absence/ And his pond fished in by his next
  neighbor, by/ Sir Smile, his neighbor.
• Becomes nastily physical no barricado for a
  belly . . .
• Hes clearly gone mad. But in a way that seems
  entirely reasonable to him.
• Which is exactly what happens in sudden outbreaks
  of jealousy theres 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 isnt 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 Shakespeares 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.
• Hermiones 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
Paulinas big scene II.3

• Says she comes to bring him sleep her words are
  medicinal as true.
• Leontes knew she would come to him.
• Shes 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 upont.
• So presumably no one touches the child.
• Paulinas 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 wont call Leontes tyrant but . . .
• And only after she is off the stage does
  Antigonus dare to pick up the child.

11
The scene of Hermiones trial

• She points out that her testimony can scarcely be
  credited since she is accused of falsehood.
• Its 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.
• Apollos 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 shes dead Ill 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.