Shakespeare\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale Commentary A. Drake, Ph.D.<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"The Winter\u2019s Tale commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Leontes, Hermione, Polixenes, Perdita, Florizel, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Romance Plays<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. The Winter\u2019s Tale.<\/em> (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 315-86).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/the-winters-tale\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/WT\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/wintersources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 297-323 (Folger)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A02143.0001.001?view=toc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Greene\u2019s Pandosto, the Triumph of Time<\/em><\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxford-shakespeare.com\/Greene\/Pandosto.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pandosto<\/em>, mod. English (Oxford)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/t\/text\/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A11270.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sabie’s The Fisherman’s Tale, Pt. 2 … (1595)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/t\/text\/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A02141.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Greene’s Second Part of Conny-Catching (1591)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/t\/text\/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A68113.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Greene’s Third Part of Conny-Catching (1592)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nGreene’s Second Part: see “<a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A02141.0001.001\/1:5.5?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A kinde conceipt of a Foist performed in Paules<\/a>“; <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A02141.0001.001\/1:5.8?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The discouery of the Courbing Law<\/a>; “<a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A02141.0001.001\/1:5.10?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Of the subtilty of a Courber in coosoning a Maide<\/a>.” Third Part: see “<a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A68113.0001.001\/1:4.3?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">An other Tale of a coosening companion, who would needs trie his cunning ….<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1 (315-16, the Bohemian courtier Archidamus praises Sicilia\u2019s accommodations; Camillo recounts the childhood closeness of Polixenes and Leontes as well as their subsequent friendship in adulthood, and praises Mamillius for his fine qualities and his good effect on the kingdom of Sicilia.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the beginning of the play, we hear how Polixenes of Bohemia and Leontes of Sicilia grew up together. Understandably in terms of the romance pattern, these two kings who already share an idyllic bond grounded in childhood memories seek to extend that bond into the present time. They are happy, but they desire to be happier still.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes\u2019s counselor Camillo, however, also describes the aftermath of their upbringing in a way that is clearly meant to be affirmative but that also introduces a note of necessary ambivalence. The original affection of the two men, he says, \u201ccannot \/ choose but branch now\u201d (316, 1.1.20-21), and their subsequent relationship has been through intermediaries: \u201ctheir \/ encounters, though not personal, hath been royally attor- \/ neyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies, \/ that they have seemed to be together though absent\u201d (316, 1.1.22-25).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo \u201cbranch\u201d is to grow and flourish, but the metaphor also implies distance and differentiation, which in turn intimate the potential, and perhaps the inevitability, of a certain degree of alienation between the two men, and the fact that they live far from each other and communicate through underlings further suggests such potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are told that Leontes\u2019s son Mamillius has an almost magical effect upon the kingdom\u2019s subjects that evokes the romance pattern\u2019s grand cycles of birth, death, and rebirth: the boy \u201cmakes \/ old hearts fresh\u201d (316, 1.1.33-34) and even overcomes the desire of the very old to die. It seems that the child is special in a way that ought to point towards the happy futurity of Leontes\u2019s royal line.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUp to this point, then, all seems well: the noble characters of this play are \u201cliving their best lives,\u201d as we might say nowadays. But this is a romance play, a tragicomedy, so we know that some destabilizing eventis bound to usher in a change that will bring suffering and loss in its train.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2 (316-28, Polixenes decorously turns down Leontes\u2019s entreaty to extend his nine-month stay, and describes for Hermione how close he and Leontes were as boys; Hermione charms Polixenes into staying; Leontes is stricken with searing jealousy at her success in persuading his friend, and after insulting Mamillius\u2019s patrimony, he orders Camillo to kill Polixenes; Camillo remonstrates against Leontes, then feigns compliance with his order, but warns Polixenes to leave at once; Camillo himself will also leave Sicilia for Bohemia.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes tries to get Polixenes to stay another week in Sicilia, but Polixenes turns him down. The way he does so turns out to be problematic: he says to Leontes, \u201cThere is no tongue that moves, none, none i\u2019th\u2019world \/ So soon as yours could win me\u201d (317, 1.2.20-21). Still, Polixenes doesn\u2019t want to put off his voyage home.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes then enlists his queen Hermione, who places her charms at the King\u2019s service. She tells Polixenes that when Leontes visits Bohemia in turn, \u201cI\u2019ll give him my commission \/ To let him there a month behind the gest \/ Prefixed for\u2019s parting\u201d (317, 1.2.40-42). For some reason, she feels it necessary to reaffirm her great love for Leontes immediately thereafter: \u201cI love thee not a jar o\u2019th\u2019 clock behind \/ What lady she her lord\u201d (317, 1.2.43-44).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe continuance of the exchange seems like innocent flirtation, but it is not difficult to see how a determined interpreter could make it sound otherwise. Shakespeare seems to have been familiar with Machiavelli\u2019s work, and as we know from that author\u2019s analysis in The Prince,<\/em> rulers who cultivate a reputation for honesty will have an easier time duping people when they really need to. <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile conversing with Hermione, Polixenes memorably describes himself and Leontes as boys in pastoral terms: \u201cWe were as twinned lambs that did frisk i\u2019th\u2019sun \/ And bleat the one at th\u2019other\u201d (318, 1.2.67-68). Polixenes obliquely introduces the subject of mature sexuality in response to Hermione\u2019s question about who was the \u201cverier wag\u201d (318, 1.2.66) of the two men when they were children: he says, \u201cWe knew not \/ The doctrine of ill-doing nor dreamed \/ That any did\u201d (318, 1.2.69-71).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe following lines make it clear that the context is implicitly sexual, and Hermione picks up on this with innocent banter, accusing Polixenes of denigrating women as \u201cdevils\u201d (319, 1.2.82). These comments may constitute the spurs to Leontes\u2019s jealousy, which begins to appear as early as the line, \u201cAt my request he would not [stay]\u201d (319, 1.2.87).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEvidently, Leontes is not entirely delighted with Polixenes\u2019s claim that if his old friend couldn\u2019t convince him to stay, no one could, and now he has given in to the lighthearted, if solicited, pleadings of Hermione. It\u2019s as if he\u2019s not simply angry at Hermione\u2019s potentially flirtatious conduct, he\u2019s jealous of her effectiveness<\/em> with Polixenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIs there some competition implied here between Leontes and Hermione for the attentions of Polixenes? It\u2019s a plausible interpretation of the scene, especially since Renaissance cultures still promoted the classically based notion of friendship between men being of a higher sort than the love between male and female. <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen we move from talk to a combination of talking and gesture between Polixenes and Hermione, things go from bad to worse. In the previous conversation, it isn\u2019t entirely clear if Leontes hears everything that passes between Hermione and Polixenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMost productions show Leontes discussing papers or some such thing while his wife entreats the King of Bohemia, and towards the end, Leontes must ask, \u201cIs he won yet?\u201d (318, 1.2.86), as if he has been standing off to the side and giving them some privacy. If so, that mixture of public-spirited \u201ccommand performance\u201d and private intimacy is destructive for Hermione, who can\u2019t win either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes points out that it took him fully three bitter <\/em>or \u201ccrabb\u00e8d\u201d months to win his wife\u2019s hand in marriage (319, 1.2.102), and now Hermione has won over Polixenes in a few moments of banter. Worse yet, she compares her successful suit to Polixenes to her courtship with Leontes: \u201cI have spoke to th\u2019 purpose twice,\u201d she says. The first time was to get a husband, and the second was to win the presence of a friend, at least for a time (319, 1.2.106).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s logical to suppose that Hermione and Polixenes now hold hands and speak or stand apart, and this rattles Leontes more than he can bear: \u201cToo hot, too hot\u201d (319, 1.2.108), he complains, and describes their bodily actions as \u201cpaddling palms and pinching fingers, \/ \u2026 and making practiced smiles \/ As in a looking glass; and then to sigh \u2026\u201d (319, 1.2.115-17).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s hard to tell whether all of these gestures are supposed to be taken as faithfully described or as the exaggerations of a heated, fearful mind. Either way, Hermione\u2019s state is now perilous even though she doesn\u2019t yet know it. We can\u2019t miss it, however, since Leontes abruptly, if obliquely, asks Mamillius whether he is his father\u2019s son (319, 1.2.119-20). <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nQueen Hermione\u2019s interaction with Polixenes probably seems innocent to us, just like Desdemona\u2019s dalliance with Michael Cassio in Othello. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, if we put ourselves in the mindset of first-time viewers, might we not share Leontes\u2019s uncertainty? We don\u2019t know Hermione well at this point, even though, as we will understand upon slightly better acquaintance with her speech and bearing, she is only behaving generously towards her husband\u2019s dear friend, following Leontes\u2019s lead in using her charms to win a longer stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any event, this first scene at the edge of happily ever is shattered by Leontes\u2019s abrupt change in passions: <a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> he sees Hermione holding hands, chatting nicely, possibly whispering, and so forth, with his old friend, and is stricken with insane, uncontrollable jealousy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJealousy stems from a disturbance in one person\u2019s object-relation to another person. This powerful passion almost certainly inhabits, even haunts, all intimate relationships. We treat affection like a scarce good, almost in an economic way, and fall to rationing it as we do with other noble and charitable ideals. The \u201cother\u201d is transfixed as something permanent, stable, unchangeable, and then when that standard seems in danger of not being met, we become enraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven though there are some possibly ambivalent words and gestures to be processed in the current scene, there is no need for plot devices or long backstory work to show where jealousy comes from: it often presents itself as if from nowhere, in real life as well as in literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis doesn\u2019t necessarily mean, of course, that there\u2019s no implied or potential history behind what we see in the first act of The Winter\u2019s Tale. <\/em>If jealousy is like a disease, it makes sense to point out that a person may not become symptomatic until the malady is well under way, and then the \u201cpresentation\u201d of the disease may seem sudden and dramatic. (Perhaps in that sense jealously is like some forms of cancer that only manifest symptoms when the underlying disease is grievously advanced.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere may be an implied sense of competitiveness between Leontes and Polixenes from their youth up, one that would account in part for the strange spell of depraved jealousy that comes over Leontes. Or it may be that for whatever reason, Leontes was never really sure <\/em>of his wife\u2019s deep affection, and thus he was primed to fly into the jealous rage that causes everyone involved so much anguish.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any case, once the madness strikes Leontes, jealousy becomes a filter for everything he sees. He categorizes himself as a confirmed cuckold: \u201cMany thousand on \u2019s \/ Have the disease and feel\u2019t not\u201d (322, 1.2.205-06), and thanks to his misplaced passion, he misreads and reinterprets all Hermione\u2019s actions as evidence of wickedness and everything everyone else does as corroboration of that wickedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCamillo must be dishonest now because he can\u2019t see what Leontes believes he himself sees (323, 1.2.242-49ff); Mamillius must be illegitimate; Hermione\u2019s innocent words and actions are doubtless pure deception, and the child whom Paulina will set before his eyes at 2.3.65-66 (pg. 336) seems to him to bear no resemblance to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes\u2019s perceptual and interpretive apparatuses have become warped or \u201cdiseased\u201d (to use Camillo\u2019s term at 324, 1.2.297). The King becomes \u201chis own Iago\u201d <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> and shares Othello\u2019s absoluteness and incapacity to deal with uncertainty: \u201cIs whispering nothing?\u201d he asks Camillo (324, 1.2.284). As Iago says in Othello,<\/em> \u201cTrifles light as air \/ Are to the jealous confirmations strong \/ As proofs of holy writ.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a> Hermione must be either a saint or a whore; for Leontes, there is nothing in between, and any uncertainty about the matter is unwelcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNo matter what Portia tells us about mercy in The Merchant of Venice,<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> the quality of some charitable affections is <\/em>forced and fragile, or hemmed in by conditions. Cordelia\u2019s understanding of love in Act 1 of King Lear <\/em>may sound brittle and cold, but it\u2019s probably accurate from the perspective of a young woman who will soon embark upon her career as a member of the ruling order in Lear\u2019s ancient Britain. <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nAs Cordelia sees things, we ration love: more for one person may mean less for others because in practical terms, love must be portioned out in units of time devoted to the beloved. When Cordelia marries, as she says, her aristocratic husband will take a certain amount of her love, which means that her father the King will get less of it. Here in Sicilia, there isn\u2019t enough love available to sustain an economy of affection between Leontes, Hermione, and Polixenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, all isn\u2019t lost: Leontes\u2019s inner corruption seems unable to corrupt others: Camillo stays true to Hermione, and therefore to Leontes. He pretends that he will honor Leontes\u2019s mad request to murder Polixenes (212, 1.2.335-36), but he refuses to poison this good man, with whom he agrees regarding the destructive effects of jealousy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nInstead, Camillo informs Polixenes of Leontes\u2019s intention to have him killed (213, 1.2.413) and helps him get away from Sicilia without delay. Camillo offers no hope of changing Leontes\u2019s mind (214, 1.2.424-31), and Polixenes is surprisingly generous in his thoughts about his old friend: \u201cThis jealousy is for a precious creature,\u201d Polixenes acknowledges, and given the great power of the man who is acting on that jealousy as well as his belief that his dearest male friend has betrayed him, it\u2019s imperative that the King of Bohemia vacate the scene at once (328, 1.2.449-60).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere will be a cure for the distrustful absolutist Leontes, as we shall see later on: he must learn to see people once again as they really are, and stop allegorizing them as emblems of sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe importance of the eye, and of vision, is emphasized in Renaissance perceptual theory (though the sense of hearing is also considered vital), <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> and common sense suggests to us how fundamental the sense of sight is for our understanding of the world. To borrow from the Gospels\u2019 metaphoric resources, \u201cBut if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!\u201d<a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a> Just now, everything has turned dark and demonic for Leontes, King of Sicilia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (328-33, Leontes is told that Polixenes and Camillo have sailed back to Bohemia; Leontes stridently accuses Hermione of treasonous adultery and has her led off to prison; Antigonus tries to set him straight and fails; Leontes has commanded a trip to Apollo\u2019s oracle, expecting confirmation of the rightness of his actions.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMamillius, asked for a story, sets the scene by telling the attending women and Hermione, \u201cA sad tale\u2019s best for winter\u201d (329, 2.1.26). But the sad tale of Leontes and Hermione prevents him from telling it: obsessed, Leontes says he has \u201cdrunk and seen the spider\u201d at the bottom of the cup (329, 2.1.46), and he goes on to accuse and order the arrest of Hermione as a treasonous adulteress, with no real hope of defense (331, 2.1.104-06). Hermione maintains her composure, saying \u201cThis action I now go on \/ Is for my better grace\u201d (331, 2.1.122-23).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs so often, the good are scarcely capable of defending themselves when evil or misprision furiously besets them: they don\u2019t have the same resources available to them as those who have no scruples about morality or whose sensibilities have been corrupted by unhealthy, excessive passions. Hermione\u2019s claims of innocence, it\u2019s easy to see from this preliminary interaction, will stand no chance when the time comes to endure the proto-Stalinist show trial that Leontes has planned for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNext follows a discussion in which another counselor (like Camillo earlier) tries to set Leontes straight, to no effect: Antigonus tells the King, \u201cYou are abused, and by some putter-on \/ That will be damned for\u2019t\u201d (331-32, 2.1.141-43). But Leontes is set upon publicly declaring his wife unfaithful, and his final move in this scene is to report that he has sent his assistants Cleomenes and Dion to Apollo\u2019s temple to consult the god\u2019s oracle. <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a> It is now time to take the matter public.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2 (333-35, Paulina tries to visit Hermione in prison; she determines to bring Hermione\u2019s newborn daughter into Leontes\u2019s presence, in hopes of curing the King of his insane jealousy.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPaulina confers with Emilia: Hermione\u2019s newborn daughter should be brought before Leontes. \u201cWe do not know \/ How he may soften at the sight o\u2019th\u2019 child\u201d (334, 2.2.40-41), she tells Emilia, and it isn\u2019t hard for Paulina to convince the jailor that there\u2019s no danger in it for him to let her leave with the child.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 3 (335-40, Mamillius falls ill; Paulina confronts Leontes with his child; Leontes initially commands that the child be cast into a fire, but relents and orders Antigonus to expose the infant beyond Sicilia\u2019s borders; Apollo\u2019s answer is on the way, and so is Hermione\u2019s show trial.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes continues to stew in his jealous anger. He can\u2019t get to Polixenes or Camillo, but he can burn Hermione at the stake as a traitor (335, 2.3.7-9). Mamillius has taken ill, and Leontes puts it down to the boy\u2019s knowledge of \u201cthe dishonor of his mother\u201d (335, 2.3.13).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe proposed punishment of Hermione may seem unthinkable to us, but the Elizabethan-Jacobean public would have found it all too true-to-life. In that period, the traditional punishment for treason was beheading for the nobility or, for the less exalted, hanging, drawing, and quartering. The heads of traitors lined London Bridge so that visitors might see them and take the terrifying lesson to heart: offend the sovereign, and you will die horribly. <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPaulina enters with the newborn child and is active and confrontational in dealing with Leontes, who tries to place the blame for the embarrassing encounter on Paulina\u2019s husband Antigonus: \u201cWhat, canst not rule her?\u201d (336, 2.3.46) to which Antigonus answers, \u201cWhen she will take the rein, I let her run \u2026\u201d (336, 2.3.51-52). The other characters at court aren\u2019t corrupt; they\u2019re just passive.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHermione is unable to deal with Leontes\u2019s madness because she is the alleged cause and object of it, so a third party like Paulina is vital. She will keep the clock ticking so that romance time can work its magic: there will be time and opportunity and good will enough to avert entire tragedy. And more than that, as we\u2019ll see, Paulina\u2019s careful, clever disposition of affairs is itself a big part of the play\u2019s \u201cmagic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe present scene has some comedy in it, with two powerful men unable to hold off the onslaught of Paulina, who even accuses Leontes of treason to his face: \u201che \/ The sacred honor of himself, his queen\u2019s, \/ His hopeful son\u2019s, his babe\u2019s, betrays to slander\u2026\u201d (337, 2.3.83-85). She later calls him a tyrant (338, 2.3.115-20), which further enrages him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn comedy, the angry father or senex iratus <\/em>is a straw man: consider Duke Frederick in As You Like It, <\/em>who threatens death and injury all around but ends up looking ridiculous and then transforming suddenly in the Forest of Arden. <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s also Egeus in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream: <\/em>this bullheaded father threatens his daughter Hermia with dire penalties for refusing to marry Demetrius, the suitor he has chosen for her. In the end, Egeus\u2019s irrational obstacle-making comes to nothing. <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a> But in romance drama, there must be legitimate potential for a tragic turn, and that is what we have been witnessing here in The Winter\u2019s Tale.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes has already declared the infant to be \u201cthe issue of Polixenes\u201d (337, 2.3.93), and his only thought is to cast both his wife and child into the traitor\u2019s fire (338, 2.3.133).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith Paulina pushed out the door and Antigonus accused of abetting her, the assembled lords kneel to bring Leontes to his senses, and at last he relents: \u201cLet it live\u201d (338, 2.3.156), he says, though the following line \u201cIt shall not neither\u201d makes it clear that the resolution isn\u2019t benign.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King\u2019s final offer is as follows: Antigonus is to take the child and \u201cbear it \/ To some remote and desert place\u201d (225, 2.3.174-75), leaving its survival or death to chance. Leontes sees this as symmetrical justice since the child came to him initially \u201cby strange fortune\u201d (339, 2.3.178), and so \u201cchance may nurse or end it\u201d (339, 2.3.182).<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes\u2019s decision at this juncture, though by no means benign in its intent, opens up the potential for the partially redemptive operations of romance time to begin working.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe may recall that shipwrecked Viola\u2019s best decision in Twelfth Night <\/em>was to commit her cause to the play\u2019s comic perspective regarding time. This is a similar moment in The Winter\u2019s Tale, <\/em>even though little \u201cPerdita,\u201d as she will subsequently be known, has no idea what\u2019s happening: the decision is made for her by Leontes, a man who doesn\u2019t mean her well, and it is carried out by one who does, Antigonus. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, Leontes announces that his messengers are coming back soon with the oracle of Apollo\u2019s pronouncement. As for Hermione, says Leontes, \u201cas she hath \/ Been publicly accused, so shall she have \/ A just and open trial\u201d (339-40, 2.3.202-04). His promise rings hollow since he is clearly in no doubt about the verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 (340, Cleomenes and Dion describe the oracular goings-on in Delphi, and are on the way back to Sicilia with the answer from Apollo\u2019s oracle.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCleomenes and Dion have done their job and now have the sealed response of Apollo\u2019s oracle. They are returning to Sicilia and hoping the answer will be for Hermione\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2 (341-46, Hermione defends herself at trial; Leontes condemns the oracle for declaring Hermione and Polixenes innocent; Mamillius\u2019s death shocks Leontes back to his senses; Hermione faints and is carried away; Leontes shows remorse for his crazed actions; Paulina returns, claims that Hermione is dead, and confronts Leontes, who vows to visit his son and wife\u2019s shrine daily as his lifelong penance.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes, meet our modern conspiracy buffs! The accusation against Hermione read by the officer is preposterous: she stands accused of \u201chigh trea- \/ son, in committing adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, \/ and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sover- \/ eign lord the King \u2026\u201d (341, 3.2.13-16).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHermione\u2019s self-defense is noble, but she hasn\u2019t a prayer of success since this is a show-trial worthy of the paranoid Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, or Hitler\u2019s captured justice system during the rule of the Nazi Regime in Germany. <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a> She loved Polixenes in just the way that Leontes demanded, she says, and as for Camillo, he is \u201can honest man\u201d whose departure from the court is mystifying to her (342, 3.2.60-64, 72-74).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHermione\u2019s quality shines through when she defies Leontes\u2019s threat of death: \u201cSir, spare your threats. \/ The bug which you would fright me with I seek\u201d (342, 3.2.89-90) and simply calls for the reading of Apollo\u2019s judgment (343, 3.2.113-14).<\/p>\n\n\n\nApollo\u2019s oracle tells Leontes that he is jaw-droppingly wrong and that he must recover what he has thrown away: \u201cHermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, \/ Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent \/ babe truly begotten; and the King shall live without an heir \/ if that which is lost be not found\u201d (343, 3.2.130-33).<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes dismisses the oracle\u2019s words, saying \u201cThere is no truth at all i\u2019the oracle,\u201d (343, 3.2.136). Evidently, his ears fail him just as his eyes did. With this impious declaration, Leontes has reached the nadir of his madness: defying the gods never ends well for the brotoi, <\/em>the dying generations of humankind. <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe announcement of the death of his son Mamillius snaps Leontes out of his state of error, but he must live with the consequences of what he has done (343-44, 3.2.140-42). Leontes has thrown away his identity along with Hermione and Perdita, who are both a part of him, and now Mamillius is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes finally realizes his error: \u201cApollo\u2019s angry, and the heavens themselves \/ Do strike at my injustice\u201d (344, 3.2.143-44). But there\u2019s more sorrow in store for him when Hermione faints at the news of Mamillius\u2019 death and is herself pronounced dead by Paulina (344, 3.2.145-46).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat follows is an anguished confrontation with Paulina, who insists that Hermione is indeed gone (345, 3.2.200-04) but who also seems moved by Leontes\u2019s overwhelming sorrow at his error. Of this, she says only, \u201cWhat\u2019s gone and what\u2019s past help \/ Should be past grief\u201d (346, 3.2.229-30). Leontes forms his plan for the future; the joint tomb of his wife and son will be his daily haunt: \u201cOnce a day I\u2019ll visit \/ The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there \/ Shall be my recreation\u201d (346, 3.2.235-37).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere will be serious consequences to reckon with from here on out: Hermione is now effectively placed in a state of suspended animation, so far as Leontes and the audience are informed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeontes will have only an image, a shrine, for years to come. His depraved obliviousness to Apollo\u2019s truth-saying has ensured this result. Leontes (like Lear and Cymbeline) has thrown away his identity, and he can\u2019t snap his fingers and get it back. That he recognized his error the instant Apollo\u2019s wrath supposedly struck down his son has made self-recovery and redemption possible, if not quick.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPaulina, in spite of her sometimes harsh words and attitude, will assist Leontes in his long time of penance, which will include frequent visits to the shrine of the woman he has wronged.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3 (346-49, Antigonus dreams of Hermione, exposes Perdita in the Bohemain wilderness, and is himself chased and eaten by a bear even as his ship offshore sinks in a terrible storm; a shepherd discovers the child with gold; he and his son anticipate their own good deeds and secure future.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile traveling by ship to Bohemia, Antigonus dreams of Hermione, who informs him that his end is near and gives him instructions on where to leave the child and what to name her: Perdita, which in Latin translates to \u201cthe lost one.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a> Antigonus is now convinced that Hermione is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe thereupon suffers the full consequences of his own failure to resist Leontes\u2019s culpable behavior, which is implicit in dream-Hermione\u2019s language: \u201cFor this ungentle business \/ Put on thee by my lord, thou ne\u2019er shalt see \/ Thy wife Paulina more\u2026\u201d (347, 3.3.33-35). Act 3 ends on a note of savagery and tempest. As for Antigonus, it\u2019s \u201cExit, pursued by a bear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven so, the third act ends with great promise for the future. In this romance play, Antigonus\u2019s exit is Perdita\u2019s entrance into a brave new world. As the old shepherd says to his son, \u201cthou mett\u2019st with things dying, \/ I with things newborn\u201d (348, 3.3.103-04). The gold Antigonus has left behind will become \u201cfairy gold\u201d (349, 3.3.112) for the shepherd who discovers the \u201cBlossom\u201d (347, 3.2.45\u2014Antigonus\u2019s farewell term) Perdita, and a new world will open up for this rustic character and his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs we move into Acts 4-5, we will witness the power of romance time to heal rifts, clear up delusions, and make things partially right. Antigonus will not share in the recovery, and there is genuine loss in that (most of all for him and his wife Paulina) because after all, he has made a decent attempt to preserve Perdita from Leontes\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 1 (349-50, Time brings us forward sixteen years and sets us down to see the rest of the play: Perdita is now a young woman.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nA chorus player speaks as \u201cTime\u201d to tell us that he is within his rights to turn the clock forward some sixteen years, to the span when Perdita is no longer an infant but a beautiful young woman, supposed by all to be the daughter of the shepherd who found her and secretly courted by Polixenes\u2019s son, Prince Florizel.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe choral pronouncement may remind some of Shakespeare\u2019s use of old John Gower (his medieval source for Pericles, Prince of Tyre<\/em>), who says at the beginning of Act 4 in that play, \u201cOnly I carry wing\u00e8d Time, \/ Post on the lame feet of my rhyme\u2026.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a> In any case, Time here is content to stay with the present, leaving subsequent revelations to play out as they may: \u201clet Time\u2019s news \/ Be known when \u2018tis brought forth\u201d (349, 4.1.26-27).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps this manner of treating time seems unrealistic. But then, if Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays feature a representational strategy that aims at a higher degree of realism than either tragedy or comedy, perhaps we can experience time\u2019s passage in a way that cannot be captured by neoclassical demands for fidelity to the so-called \u201cunity of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nEspecially for older people, many years may seem to have raced by in an instant. One is reminded of landmark events in world history or even in one\u2019s personal history, and is perpetually surprised to hear, \u201csuch-and-such happened twenty years ago to the day.\u201d This astonishing experience of temporality is not uncommon, and it may be useful to refer to the philosopher Henri Bergson\u2019s notion of lived or subjectively experienced time, la dur\u00e9e, <\/em>as opposed to a more objective, standard sense of time, which has to do with deadlines, absolute dates, and so forth. <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scenes 2-3 (350-53, Camillo\u2019s desire to return to Sicilia is frustrated by Polixenes, who is gathering intelligence on his absent son Florizel: Polixenes and Camillo will disguise themselves and visit the shepherd; Autolycus gives us his resume, robs the shepherd\u2019s son, and plans to crash the sheep-shearing festival.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Act 4, Scene 2, Camillo longs to return to Sicilia after the long gap that Time has just indicated, but Polixenes won\u2019t grant his wish (350, 4.2.13-16). He is more intent on finding out what his son Florizel has been up to lately, and to that end, he determines to pay a visit in disguise to the shepherd and \u201chave some question\u201d (351, 4.2.45) with him. For Camillo, then, the sixteen-year gap has been one of growing frustration, of nostalgia for his native land.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAutolycus, who enters in Act 4, Scene 3 declaring himself presently \u201cout of service\u201d (351, 4.3.14), is a human woozle\u2014he\u2019s a trickster, an opportunist, a businessman who deals in stolen linens (351, 4.3.23). <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a> He is hardly the worst character in Shakespeare\u2019s plays, but it\u2019s hard to deny that he is from one angle a parasite on the generous psychic economy of the play\u2019s rustics, whose festivities he will soon invade with his bawdiness and commercialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven here, before the springtime celebration, he manages to rob the shepherd\u2019s son by feigning victimhood and denouncing one \u201cAutolycus\u201d (himself) as the fellow who robbed him: a man of shady devices and dubious career (353, 4.3.87-92).<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, there\u2019s something positive in Autolycus in spite of his intentions, as his remark about the coming of spring suggests: \u201cFor the red blood reigns in the winter\u2019s pale\u201d (351, 4.3.4). Even if he has his own selfish purposes for the transformation, he hails the coming of spring and new life. In this capacity, Autolycus will have a role in the bittersweet comic resolution of the play\u2019s final two acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 4 (353-73, Florizel courts Perdita; Polixenes talks of nature and artifice with Perdita as she presides over the spring festival; dancing comes before and after; Autolycus\u2019s show commandeers the festivities; when Florizel and Perdita declare their love, Polixenes angrily exposes his sonseparate; Florizel and Perdita are determined to run away; Camillo counsels Florizel to head for Sicilia; Florizel then exchanges clothing with Autolycus; the shepherd and his son set out to find the King and proclaim their innocence, but Autolycus, disguised as a courtier, points them towards Florizel\u2019s ship; Autolycus muses on his good fortune in such encounters.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis scene, one of the longest in any of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, begins with the courtship between Prince Florizel and Perdita. The young man is confident in his good intentions, while Perdita shows considerable anxiety about dressing up and acting a part beyond her station: \u201cEven now I tremble \/ To think your father by some accident \/ Should pass this way \u2026\u201d (354, 4.4.18-20).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAgainst this anxiety, Florizel asserts the universality of disguising oneself in erotic pursuits: \u201cThe gods themselves, \/ \u2026 have taken \/ The shapes of beasts upon them\u201d (354, 4.4.25-27). Her fears aside, Perdita will be \u201cmistress o\u2019th\u2019 feast\u201d (355, 4.4.68) at the old shepherd\u2019s insistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolixenes and Camillo soon show up in disguise and strike up a conversation with this queen of the festivities. <a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a> Perdita and Polixenes engage in a bit of combined horticultural talk and literary criticism, a discussion about the emblematic significance of certain flowers (\u201cstreaked gillyvors,\u201d or multicolored carnations) and ultimately about the respective merits of artifice and nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe critical frame gestures towards the idea that Perdita herself is the \u201cgraft\u201d that mends the rustic society surrounding her: she is a beautiful work of art rooted in nature\u2019s processes. Polixenes insists that careful gardening is natural <\/em>art: \u201cThis is an art \/ Which does mend nature\u2014change it, rather\u2014but \/ The art itself is nature\u201d (356, 4.4.95-97). While Perdita wants to stick with what\u2019s available in her own rustic garden, Polixenes sees no problem with improving what nature offers freely, and like a good Renaissance critic, he calls artifice (the means whereby nature is improved) natural, too. <a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPerdita, ever the nature-goddess-tending maiden, isn\u2019t convinced (or rather she admits the point, but is unmoved by it), and in the end we can probably say (adapting a thought from Harold Bloom in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em>) that Perdita is her own best argument, and as natural as the goddess Flora herself. <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Polixenes\u2019s argument comes off as wise\u2014or at least it would <\/em>if he didn\u2019t become enraged upon finding out that his son Florizel wants him to allow the mixing of his own aristocratic stock with the common stock of his kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Shakespeare\u2019s plays generally, artifice may fairly be described as a natural aspect of human nature: we are at our best when we are accommodated<\/em> or civilized human beings, not when we are what King Lear mistakenly supposes he sees in Edgar as Poor Tom: \u201cThou art the thing \/ itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, \/ bare, forked animal as thou art.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nBut this is not King Lear\u2019s impoverished universe. Here, there is more scope for a healthy view of unmixed nature and natural impulse in this pastoral romance. Perdita exudes healthy animality along with her nobility. She embodies a benevolent form of nature, unlike the bear that devoured Antigonus sixteen years back when he was abandoning Perdita on the harsh seacoast of Bohemia, <a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> and unlike the form of nature we see in Leontes\u2019s crazed, desperate descent into the hellish abyss of jealousy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerdita\u2019s grace is demonstrated by the effect her presence has on Florizel. Her own playful words give just a hint of Ovidian sportfulness (356, 4.4.112-29) where she invokes Proserpina, <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a> but modesty at once makes her take it back: \u201cSure this robe of mine \/ Does change my disposition\u201d (357, 4.4.134-35). Florizel, however, sees nothing wrong with what Perdita has said, and he tells her, \u201cWhen you do dance, I wish you \/ A wave o\u2019th\u2019 sea\u201d (357, 4.4.140-41).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerdita\u2019s is a graceful, immediate presence, and everything she does is art. In her person, art and nature come together without strife.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis harmony in Perdita contrasts starkly with Leontes\u2019s misprision of nature as something base and demonic. At the play\u2019s outset, his ideal woman would not be Hermione living (\u201cToo hot, too hot,\u201d Leontes had said of her at 319, 1.2.108) or Perdita in motion. It would be a statue: something cold, chaste, and dead. Later, to see her \u201ccome alive\u201d from an assumed state of stone is part of Leontes\u2019s penance, but also his reward for his long-suffering fidelity after the initial mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the present scene, Perdita has the grace of a statue and the natural vivacity of a living being at the same time: she is artifice in motion. That is what Leontes will need to accept about Hermione to complete his \u201crecreation.\u201d His failure to accord Hermione the credit she deserved as a fully human being rather than as a courtly object caused the play\u2019s sad events.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is clear from the passage quoted above that young Florizel, unlike Leontes, has no trouble perceiving and affirming these qualities in his Perdita: \u201cWhat you do \/ Still betters what is done\u201d (357, 4.4.135-36).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Autolycus, he is a confirmed rascal, but he also brings in the spring with his songs, flowers, and bright scarves: the servant who announces his presence seems excited, telling the shepherd, \u201cif you did but hear the peddler at the \/ door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe\u201d (358, 4.4.182-83). This same servant is unable to register the bawdy quality of the songs that Autolycus offers his rustic audience, but we may suppose that his naivet\u00e9 just serves the cause of nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps at this point Autolycus, man of disguises and shifts, is providing us a comic contrast to Florizel, who has been courting Perdita in a disguised but honorable fashion. Paulina, too, later uses the arts of deception in a healthy cause, which links her to the trickster of the present scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe shepherd\u2019s son ends up buying some ballads from Autolycus, and perhaps some other things as well: his love interest in the shepherd girls at the festivities drives him to buy what Autolycus is selling. Much song and dance follows in this scene both before and after Autolycus makes his entrance: first there is \u201ca dance of shepherds and shepherdesses\u201d (358, 4.4.166), and later, there is a \u201cdance of twelve satyrs\u201d (361, 4.4.333).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTrouble soon follows, however, when Florizel demonstrates his commitment to Perdita in front of Polixenes. The old man pretends to go along with his son, but finally asks, \u201cSoft, swain, awhile, beseech you. \/ Have you a father?\u201d (363, 4.4.383-84), and he does not like the answer he gets. Polixenes has a point: \u201cThe father, all whose joy is nothing else \/ But fair posterity, should hold some counsel \/ In such a business\u201d (363, 4.4.399-401).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolixenes proceeds to threaten not only the old shepherd but also Florizel and even Perdita with dire consequences (363-64, 4.4.408-11, 416-20, 423-32). As in some of Shakespeare\u2019s comedies, we have run into the classical figure of the senex iratus,<\/em> the angry old man. <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a> Polixenes\u2019s conduct at this point also links him to the Leontes of the first act in that his rashness threatens tragedy for himself and others. It will be his good fortune that the same consequences that beset Leontes do not afflict him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, we need not regard Polixenes as entirely ridiculous. In this play, as a Professor Harold Toliver of UC Irvine observes, the old need to be convinced of the worthiness of the new. In comedy, the emphasis is on the perspectives and desires of the young, but in romance drama, the elders\u2019 perspective is usually as valuable, or even more so, than that of the young.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis point holds true even though romance quests are partly about reintegration and renewal through marriage between the young. After all\u2014and here Shakespeare departs from Greene\u2019s Pandosto<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a>\u2014the present play centers on the reunification of Leontes and Hermione, the older generation. Polixenes feels that Florizel has cast off his royal identity, so the fourth act legitimately involves Polixenes\u2019s dynastic concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn his distress, Florizel turns to Camillo (367, 4.4.483-93), who has a reason of his own for wanting to help: he wants to return to Sicilia: \u201cNow were I happy if \/ His going I could frame to serve my turn\u2026\u201d (366, 4.4.499-500).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe plan for Florizel is to go to Sicilia and claim that he has arrived with his father\u2019s blessing. Camillo reasons that Leontes will be so happy to do him a good turn that he won\u2019t ask questions, and with a little inside information that Camillo himself will provide, the way to Leontes\u2019s good graces will be smooth (366-67, 4.4. 533-46).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile Camillo, Florizel and Perdita are on the way to their ship, they come across Autolycus, who ends up doing them a good turn. As usual the rascal is pretending to be a poor innocent who has fallen upon hard times, and Camillo asks Autolycus to exchange clothing with Florizel, who will now have the disguise he needs to get safely aboard his ship (368-69, 4.4.619-24).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo himself and us, Camillo admits that he plans to tell Polixenes about Florizel\u2019s flight, which will rouse the father to chase after his son. The King of Bohemia will, of course, bring Camillo along with him to Sicilia. (369, 4.4.648-53).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAutolycus is now dressed as a worthy courtier since he traded his own rags for Florizel\u2019s finery. All the same, his slippery ethos shows in the line, \u201cI see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive\u201d (369, 4.4.659-60). In the course of interacting with Camillo and Florizel, he realizes what the young man must be up to, but determines to keep the information to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon thereafter, the old shepherd and his son cross paths with Autolycus, giving him another opportunity for gain. He plays the courtier with these two peasants, who are thoroughly taken in by his imposture. Autolycus promises to bring the old shepherd and his son to Polixenes to tell his story, which Autolycus easily draws from him: \u201cHe must know \u2018tis \/ none of your daughter nor my sister\u201d (372, 4.4.798-99). Autolycus decides to lead these two undiscerning men directly to Florizel rather than Polixenes, the point being to find out whether their revelation poses any hazards for Florizel (373, 4.4.810-20).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat the rascal says is true enough: \u201cIf I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would \/ not suffer me; she drops booties in my mouth\u201d (373, 4.4.810-11). Still, while Autolycus is the play\u2019s resident Lord of Misrule, he is unable to corrupt anyone else, even if he succeeds in cozening some and concealing his identity from others.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe romance world Shakespeare has built is big enough to accommodate rogues like this. As it will turn out (for so we hear from Autolycus himself), Florizel\u2019s brief illness aboard his ship will keep him from questioning the shepherd and his son, and the story that\u2019s theirs to tell will be told directly to both Leontes and Polixenes in Sicilia, just at the right time and place to do Perdita and Florizel a good turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1 (373-78, Paulina makes Leontes promise not to remarry without her consent; Florizel and Perdita arrive at the Sicilian court and Leontes, reminiscing on what might have been, welcomes the youngsters; Polixenes and Camillo have also made port at Sicilia, and when the Bohemian King\u2019s messenger accuses Florizel of disobedience, Leontes promises to take up the young man\u2019s cause.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nEven as Cleomenes is telling Leontes he should forgive himself, Paulina continues to goad Leontes\u2019s conscience: \u201cshe you killed \/ Would be unparalleled\u201d (373, 5.1.15-16). Paulina\u2019s main purpose here is to prevent the King from remarrying without her consent, and she is successful in extracting from him a promise not to do so. Leontes is not to remarry, she insists, \u201cUnless another \/ As like Hermione as is her picture \/ affront his eye\u2026\u201d (375, 5.1.73-75). This new wife will of course be older than was Hermione sixteen years ago, says Paulina cryptically.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA servant announces the arrival of Florizel and his young princess (375, 5.1.85-88). Leontes declares, \u201cI lost a couple that twixt heaven and earth \/ Might thus have stood, begetting wonder\u2026\u201d (376, 5.1.131-32). He apparently means Mamillius along with Perdita\u2014he has cast away the immediate heir to his throne, and sees something of the young man in Florizel, who immediately attempts to deceive Leontes into believing he has arrived with his father\u2019s blessing: \u201cBy his command \/ Have I here touched Sicilia\u2026\u201d (376, 5.1.137-38).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis gambit does not go well, however, since a lord enters and announces that \u201cBohemia\u2026 \/ Desires you to attach his son, who has, \/ His dignity and duty both cast off\u2026\u201d (377, 5.1.180-82).<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, this new piece of information gives Leontes a redemptive opportunity to enlist himself in Florizel\u2019s cause, and he agrees to advocate for him: \u201cI will to your father\u201d (378, 5.1.228). Paulina keeps up her role as general scold to Leontes\u2019s conscience, reminding him about the loss of Mamillius (376, 5.1.115-18) and then reproaching him for his remark about Perdita to Florizel, \u201cI\u2019d beg your precious mistress\u201d (378, 5.1.222), to which Paulina retorts, \u201cYour eye hath too much youth in\u2019t\u201d (378, 5.1.224).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2 (379-82, courtiers inform Autolycus that Perdita has been revealed as the daughter of Leontes and Hermione; at court, Paulina and Perdita respectively face the loss of Antigonus and Hermione; Perdita and the others long to view the statue of Hermione that Paulina has commissioned from the Italian artist Giulio Romano; Autolycus receives pardon from the newly gentled shepherd and his son.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWe learn from a series of reported revelations that Perdita has at last been discovered to be Leontes\u2019s lost daughter. The old shepherd brought his material reminders and told his story about how he found a little girl who had been abandoned (379, 5.2.3-7). A gentleman declares that it all sounds to him \u201cso like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion\u201d (379, 5.2.27). In other words, it sounds just like an old winter\u2019s tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNonetheless, plenty of evidence (material and otherwise) convinces everyone that it must be so (379, 5.2.29-38). There is both joy and great sadness in the revelations given in this scene since Paulina has it confirmed that Antigonus is indeed gone forever, \u201ctorn to pieces with a bear\u201d (380, 5.2.60), and Perdita must confront the news that the mother she never saw is dead (380, 5.2.76-85).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut we also hear from yet another gentleman that Perdita is eager to behold the statue of Hermione that Paulina is said to have ordered completed by Giulio Romano (ca. 1499-1546), an actual Italian mannerist painter and architect (but not a sculptor) who worked just before the middle of the sixteenth century. <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a> We are told that the statue is so excellent a piece of realism that \u201cthey say one \/ would speak to her and stand in hope of answer\u201d (380, 5.2.93-94).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps Shakespeare had heard of Romano\u2019s famous illusionistic fresco in Mantua\u2019s Palazzo del T\u00e8 titled \u201cThe Fall of the Giants\u201d (La Caduta dei giganti<\/em>), a work so skillfully designed that it blended into and seemed to dissolve the building\u2019s architecture. <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a> He may also have read in Giorgio Vasari\u2019s The Lives<\/em> of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects<\/em> about the epitaph on Romano\u2019s lost tomb in Mantua, which said that the god Jupiter, envious of Romano\u2019s skill as an artist who could make \u201csculpted and painted bodies breathe,\u201d ordered the man killed. <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe last thing that happens in this scene is a piece of comic reckoning and reconciliation between Autolycus and the newly noble shepherd and son. Autolycus reveals to us that he did indeed bring this pair to be questioned by Florizel, but that nothing came of it (381, 5.2.106-15).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn spite of himself, Autolycus has done no harm, but now it\u2019s time to beg pardon of these fine rustic gentlemen, ennobled by their happy recounting of Perdita\u2019s discovery. Autolycus implores the old man \u201cto pardon me all the \/ faults I have committed \u2026 and to give me your \/ good report to the Prince my master\u201d (381, 5.2.138-40). And being gentlemen, how can they refuse? The shepherd\u2019s son has an amusing understanding of what gentility means: \u201cIf it be ne\u2019er so false, a true gentleman may swear it \/ in the behalf of his friend\u2026\u201d (382, 5.2.151-52).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 3 (382-86, Leontes, Polixenes, Perdita, Florizel, and Camillo accompany Paulina to see the statue of Hermione; Leontes\u2019s grief at the uncanny likeness before him is evident, and Perdita kneels at the feet of the statue, seeking its blessing; Paulina tells the statue that the Delphian oracle has been fulfilled, so it may now step down and move among the guests; the \u201cstatue\u201d appears to come back to life, and Leontes is overcome with joy and gratitude at this second chance; Camillo and Paulina are united, completing a partial but wonderful reconciliation and recovery.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat remains to be achieved is the fullest possible recovery of Hermione and her reconciliation with Leontes and Perdita. Hermione must be recognized as the virtuous woman she was and still is.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe plastic arts device in The Winter\u2019s Tale <\/em>is one of Shakespeare\u2019s excellent references to the power of art to transform perception and passion and to bring about reconciliation, justice, or some other desired end, and its staging here seems entirely appropriate to the romance genre. <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> The \u201cart work\u201d in this case is a living woman who has been liberated and who now frees Leontes from his sorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe play\u2019s conclusion amounts to a romance triumph over death no less remarkable for its staged quality. No metaphysical miracle is necessary. Instead, Paulina\u2019s artful and charitable application of what in Autolycus\u2019s hands would be roguish shifts redeems such deception and turns it to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAside from the obvious connection to the story of the sculptor Pygmalion as recounted by Ovid in the tenth book of Metamorphoses, <\/em><a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> Paulina\u2019s device may profitably be discussed in relation to ancient literary theory. We may recall the famous contest (as described by Pliny in his Natural History, <\/em>Ch. 36, \u201cArtists Who Painted with the Pencil\u201d), between Zeuxis and Parrhasius over who could paint more realistically. Zeuxis painted some grapes so well that his painting fooled birds, but Parrhasius painted a curtain, and when Zeuxis asked him to draw back the curtain to reveal his work, Parrhasius won the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe winner knew that seeing was a matter of convention: we see what we look for. The curtain may or may not have been more realistic in terms of technical precision, but it was what Zeuxis was looking for. <a href=\"#_edn35\" id=\"_ednref35\">[35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nLike Parrhasius, Paulina has made her choice of representational strategy carefully: the statue trick she carries out is a matter of canny affective<\/em> (emotional) staging: the apparent coming-back-to-life of Hermione will again demonstrate to Leontes his error, yet it will also constitute his greatest reward.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King is at first struck by the difference <\/em>from his idealized, perhaps aestheticized, memory of a youthful wife, and he observes, \u201cHermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing \/ So aged as this seems\u201d (383, 5.3.28-29). But even if Leontes is at first shown what he was probably looking for, the trick doesn\u2019t end there: the statue-device is a spur to his willingness to recognize the full humanity and integrity of his long-lost wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPaulina\u2019s deferral of Leontes\u2019s desire for reunion is the last stage of his penance: while he longs to continue viewing the \u201cstatue,\u201d Paulina feigns determination to stop him: \u201cNo longer shall you gaze on\u2019t, lest your fancy \/ May think anon it moves\u201d (384, 5.3.60-61). But at long last, Leontes, whose mad jealousy made him \u201csee the object as in itself it really was not\u201d (to adapt a line from Oscar Wilde) <a href=\"#_edn36\" id=\"_ednref36\">[36]<\/a> and who thereby stereotyped, objectified, even killed<\/em> Hermione in a sense, must be reintroduced to the real woman, now sixteen years older.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPaulina now promises to work what the audience and the bereaved husband are bound to take for a miracle: \u201cI\u2019ll make the statue move indeed, descend, \/ And take you by the hand\u201d (384, 5.3.88-89).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHermione is not made of stone. She is a living, breathing human being, one subject to time and free to whisper and touch the hand of a dear friend, for her husband\u2019s sake or for her own. At Paulina\u2019s prompting, Leontes presents his hand as if to play the suitor anew, and Hermione embraces him (385, 5.3.111).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll that remains for the finalization of this seeming miracle\u2014for it makes sense to suppose that Leontes deems miraculous the simple ability to see his wife as she is, after so many years of grief and penitence\u2014is a living human voice. So Hermione speaks, explaining that she has remained alive all these years because she knew the oracle had offered hope of Perdita\u2019s continued existence (385, 5.3.121-28).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSome may take that explanation as rather pointed, given that her long-absent husband is standing right next to her, but perhaps we are to understand that everyone\u2019s reconciliation is equally important since Hermione has already embraced Leontes. The last item in the play is to unite Camillo and Paulina, who is still half-stunned by the recent news of Antigonus\u2019s demise by bear sixteen years ago. Leontes effects the match without delay (386-87, 5.3.135-46).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt has been said that the solution for Leontes in The Winter\u2019s Tale <\/em>lies in re-establishing the truth of what he sees.<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn37\" id=\"_ednref37\">[37]<\/a> At the beginning of the play, Leontes\u2019s jealousy had blocked the innocent backstory (the personal history between him and Hermione) that should have guaranteed the King\u2019s continued good relationship with his Queen. What remained was only the object before him, the body of Hermione. Accepting the truth of what Leontes sees, and what we see, involves not <\/em>blocking this history, and allowing instead the sense of wonder at another\u2019s goodness to remain intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis willingness may, in turn, involve knowing or unknowing affirmation of grand forces operating within and without us: the movements of cosmic time, natural process, the maturation that experience should bring. These forces seem to underlie and ratify the fully humanized, organic act of seeing to which we bear witness in this final scene of The Winter\u2019s Tale. <\/em>Ultimately, Shakespearean romance reorients us towards an attitude of wonder not only at our own follies but also at the depth of our potential for vision and respect for our own and others\u2019 humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, we know that the romance genre tries to take to itself some of the permanence and profundity of the great natural cycles of death and rebirth, decay and renewal. There is something in romance time of Shelley\u2019s \u201cdestroyer and preserver,\u201d the West Wind. <a href=\"#_edn38\" id=\"_ednref38\">[38]<\/a> In a quieter vein, some readers may recall the unseen but healing operations of \u201cthe secret ministry of Frost\u201d in Coleridge\u2019s \u201cFrost at Midnight.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn39\" id=\"_ednref39\">[39]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays don\u2019t sweep away the passage of time or cancel its ravages: romance time offers regeneration, but it also encompasses death and destruction as being necessary. <a href=\"#_edn40\" id=\"_ednref40\">[40]<\/a> There is a general embrace of the miraculous and the improbable in such plays, but it\u2019s no less true that what has been lost can\u2019t always be recovered fully, and sometimes not at all. Antigonus and Mamillius do not share in the reconciliations and recoveries that constitute the ending of The Winter\u2019s Tale. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat the characters get is not \u201cdo-overs\u201d in the simplest sense\u2014no straightforward \u201cmulligans,\u201d as golfers would say\u2014but second chances in altered circumstances, following temporal gaps or delays. Events and persons may come full circle, but there is change, which entails loss and sorrow, along the way, leaving even triumphant conclusions with a bittersweet taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNone of this is to say, however, that the romance plays are anything but ultimately hopeful and uplifting: for all their fantastical qualities and effects, they offer what may well be the most realistic orientation towards the larger pattern of a long life, one full of recurrent travails and opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespearean Romance does not offer ultimate insight and intense clarity near the point of one\u2019s being crushed by inexorable forces, as in tragedy; nor does it offer a sunny representation of individual satisfaction and happy communities, as in the lighter of Shakespeare\u2019s comedies. No, what the Romance plays offer is a kind of wisdom that allows us to abide in uncertainty, accept the changes and loss that time brings, and be thankful for the rare second chances we may receive, however imperfect the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSince Apollo powerfully represents the divine in The Winter\u2019s Tale, <\/em>it seems appropriate to give him the last word. As he tells the other gods towards the end of Homer\u2019s Iliad,<\/em> \u201ca steadfast spirit have the Fates given unto men.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn41\" id=\"_ednref41\">[41]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong> Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems + Digital Edition.<\/em> 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93862-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 8\/7\/2025 2:50 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> Machiavelli, Niccol\u00f2. The Prince. <\/em>See, for example, Ch. XVIII. \u201cConcerning the Way in Which Princes Should Keep Faith.\u201d Machiavelli reasons as follows: a prince should make sure that \u201che may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious\u2026. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many\u2026.\u201d Trans. W. K. Marriott. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1232\/1232-h\/1232-h.htm\">Project Gutenberg e-text<\/a>. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> With regard to the classical and Renaissance concept of male-male friendship, amicitia perfecta,<\/em> see the RSC\u2019s article \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespearesglobe.com\/discover\/blogs-and-features\/2020\/03\/14\/friendship-in-early-modern-england\/\">Friendship in Early Modern England<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 2\/29\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> Leontes betrays an intense fear and distrust of female sexuality, a problem that Stephen Orgel covers well in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeares-works\/the-winters-tale\/the-winters-tale-a-modern-perspective\/\">A Modern Perspective: The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Folger Shakespeare website. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> The medical term for the sudden change is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/affectio\">affectio<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Wiktionary. Accessed: 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> A point made by Harold Bloom in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.<\/em> New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. \u201cThe Winter\u2019s Tale.<\/em>\u201d 639-61. See 639.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.<\/em> Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 512-86. 552, 3.3.319-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 467-521. See 508-09, 4.1.182-200, where Portia explains that \u201cThe quality of mercy is not strained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> Shakespeare. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See especially 766, 1.1.93-101.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> See, for example, Marsilio Ficino\u2019s Neoplatonic theory of perception, as explained by John Shannon Hendrix in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.rwu.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=saahp_fp\">Theories of Perception in Renaissance Humanism<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+6%3A23&version=GNV\">Matthew <\/em>6:23<\/a>. 1599 Geneva Bible.<\/em> Biblegateway.com. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> For a brief history of Apollo\u2019s Oracle at Delphi, see Britannica\u2019s entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Delphic-oracle\">Delphic Oracle<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024. For a fuller study, see Michael Scott\u2019s Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. <\/em>Princeton UP, 2015. See also William J. Broad\u2019s The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets.<\/em> Penguin, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> Elizabethan-Jacobean justice and punishment were often quite severe, even savage by our standards. One brief introduction to the subject is Elizabethan-era.org\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elizabethan-era.org.uk\/elizabethan-crime-and-punishment.htm\">Elizabethan Crime and Punishment<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024. A more detailed introduction is available at encyclopedia.com: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/humanities\/news-wires-white-papers-and-books\/crime-and-punishment-elizabethan-england\">Crime and Punishment in Elizabethan England<\/a>.\u201d Elizabethan World Reference Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> Shakespeare. As You Like It.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731. See 683-86, 1.3 and 729, 5.4.145-62.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 406-53.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> With regard to the name \u201cPerdita,\u201d see Antigonus\u2019s phrase \u201cPoor thing, condemned to loss\u201d at 339, 2.3.191; the name means \u201cthe lost one\u201d after perditus <\/em>in Latin. Shakespeare\u2019s verse requires accenting the word on its antepenult: P\u00e9r-di-ta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> On Stalin\u2019s Great Purge and Moscow Trials, see Britannica\u2019s entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Great-Purge\">Great Purge<\/a>.\u201d Regarding Hitler\u2019s perversion of the German justice system, see Encyclopedia.com\u2019s entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/law-and-justice-in-the-third-reich\">Law and Justice in the Third Reich<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024. Another fine study is Ernst Fraenkel\u2019s The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship. <\/em>Oxford UP, 2017. Original pub. in German, 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> With regard to defying the gods, there are numerous instances of such disastrous acts in pre-Classical and Classical Greek and Latin literature. Among the most well-known instances is the impious decision on the part of Odysseus\u2019s men to slaughter and eat the Cattle of the Sun-God Helios. For this heedless act, says Homer, they paid with their lives, so that only Odysseus ever makes it back home to Ithaca. See <a href=\"http:\/\/data.perseus.org\/citations\/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-eng1:12.327-12.363\">The Odyssey, <\/em>Book 12.329ff<\/a>. Trans. A. T. Murray. Perseus Project. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> Or, in Italian, \u201closs\u201d itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 150-206). 183, 4.0.47-48.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> La dur\u00e9e is Bergson\u2019s concept of an experience of time other than what we call \u201cobjective time\u201d (the simple passage of units of time). See The Conversation Blog\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/a-philosophical-idea-that-can-help-us-understand-why-time-is-moving-slowly-during-the-pandemic-151250\">entry<\/a> or, for a rigorous philosophical discussion of this concept, see the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy\u2019s entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/bergson\/\">Henri Bergson<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> Woozles are members of the Disney stable of cartoon characters. Weasel-like, slippery creatures, their reason for existing is to steal honey, which makes them the stuff of Winnie the Pooh\u2019s nightmares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> This is a sheep-shearing festival, which is similar to other summer festivals in England. See Internet Shakespeare Editions\u2019 entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/SLT\/society\/country%20life\/villagedances.html\">Village Celebrations<\/a>.\u201d On the wool trade, see historyofengland.com\u2019s entry on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.historic-uk.com\/HistoryUK\/HistoryofEngland\/Wool-Trade\/\">Wool Trade<\/a>. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/a> Regarding the debate over artifice vs. nature in horticulture (especially gardening), see Luke Morgan\u2019s article \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/researchmgt.monash.edu\/ws\/portalfiles\/portal\/46733067\/21142544.pdf\">Garden Design and Experience in Shakespeare\u2019s England<\/a>\u201d at Monash.edu. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. <\/em>New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. \u201cThe Winter\u2019s Tale.<\/em>\u201d 639-61. See 653-54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> Shakespeare. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. 805, 3.4.96-98.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> This coast is delightfully nonexistent since the real Bohemia is landlocked in today\u2019s Czech Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> See Theoi.com\u2019s entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/Khthonios\/HaidesPersephone2.html\">The Rape of Proserpina<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> The senex iratus<\/em> is one of several stock characters in Greek and Roman comedy; his role is generally to impose obstacles and make a fool of himself. The miles gloriosus <\/em>or braggart soldier is another such foolish character\u2014his vanity and ego get him into trouble every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> In <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A02143.0001.001?view=toc\">Pandosto: The Triumph of Time<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Robert Greene has the King of Bohemia commit suicide in despair over the irreparable harm he has caused to his family. EEBO\/U-Mich. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> On Giulio Romano, (ca. 1499-1546), see the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/cathen\/06572a.htm\">entry on Romano<\/a> and ArtCyclopedia\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artcyclopedia.com\/artists\/giulio_romano.html\">entry on Romano<\/a>. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> See Atlas Obscura\u2019s article on \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/places\/chamber-of-the-giants\">The Chamber of the Giants<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> See Bette Talvacchia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/ER1993-v1-1D-Talvacchia_Hermione-Winters-Tale.pdf\">The Rare Italian Master and the Posture of Hermione in The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/a>.\u201d LIT,<\/em> Vol. 3, #3, 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> The \u201cplay within the play\u201d device covers some of the same ground\u2014we easily recall its significance in Hamlet <\/em>and A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> Ovid. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/21765\/21765-h\/21765-h.htm\">Metamorphoses. <\/em>Book X<\/a>. Project Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref35\" id=\"_edn35\">[35]<\/a> Jana P\u0159idalov\u00e1 mentions the Zeuxis anecdote in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/digilib.phil.muni.cz\/sites\/default\/files\/pdf\/104207.pdf\">Symbolic Images of Mimesis, Tromp l\u2019oeil and a Veil in <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/digilib.phil.muni.cz\/sites\/default\/files\/pdf\/104207.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shakespeare\u2019s <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/digilib.phil.muni.cz\/sites\/default\/files\/pdf\/104207.pdf\">The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/a>,\u201d Brno Studies in English.<\/em> 2005, vol. 31, issue 1, pp. 175-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref36\" id=\"_edn36\">[36]<\/a> In \u201cThe Function of Criticism at the Present Time,\u201d earnest Victorian critic Matthew Arnold wrote that the imperative of criticism is \u201cto see the object as in itself it really is.\u201d In \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wilde-online.info\/the-critic-as-artist.html\">The Critic as Artist<\/a>,\u201d Wilde added \u201cnot\u201d to the end of this sentence, thereby reversing Arnold\u2019s judgment. Wilde-Online.info. Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref37\" id=\"_edn37\">[37]<\/a> I owe this excellent point to UC Irvine Professor Harold Toliver, several of whose courses I was privileged to take during my time at that school. The idea may strike readers as consonant with William Blake\u2019s great dictum, \u201cIf the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/blakearchive.org\/copy\/mhh.a?descId=mhh.a.illbk.14\">The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Copy A, Plate 14<\/a><\/em>. 1790. From The William Blake Archive. Accessed 8\/7\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref38\" id=\"_edn38\">[38]<\/a> The Greeks called the West Wind Zephyros; <\/em>the other three wind gods or anemoi<\/em> were Boreas<\/em> the North Wind, Notos<\/em> the South Wind, and Euros<\/em> the East Wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref39\" id=\"_edn39\">[39]<\/a> Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/43986\/frost-at-midnight\">Frost at Midnight<\/a>.\u201d Poetry Foundation.org. Accessed 3\/1\/2024. See also Percy B. Shelley\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/45134\/ode-to-the-west-wind\">Ode to the West Wind<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref40\" id=\"_edn40\">[40]<\/a> Norton editor Jean E. Howard\u2019s introduction to The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em> (303-13) is excellent on key aspects of Shakespeare\u2019s romances. See also Northrop Frye\u2019s The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. <\/em>Rev. ed. Harvard UP, 1978.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref41\" id=\"_edn41\">[41]<\/a> Homer. Iliad <\/em>24.49. The Greek runs, \u03c4\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u039c\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03ad\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, tl\u0113ton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthr\u014dpoisin<\/em>. See <a href=\"http:\/\/data.perseus.org\/citations\/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc1:24.22-24.63\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Perseus Project\u2019s text of The Iliad<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Accessed 3\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale Commentary A. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Winter\u2019s Tale. (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 315-86). Of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[110,36,115,116,114,113,111,32,112],"wf_page_folders":[9],"class_list":["post-145","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-romance-plays","tag-bohemia","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-giulio-romano","tag-i-have-drunk-and-seen-the-spider","tag-nature-and-philosophy","tag-pygmalion","tag-shakespeare-and-flowers","tag-shakespeares-romance-plays","tag-shakespearean-heroines-queen-hermione"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale Commentary A. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Winter\u2019s Tale. (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 315-86). Of […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9721,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/145\/revisions\/9721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":145,"date":"2024-04-13T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-13T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=55"},"modified":"2025-08-07T14:51:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T21:51:01","slug":"the-winters-tale-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/the-winters-tale-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Winter’s Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"