The Winter’s Tale Third lecture

The pastoral cut short Why exactly does Polixenes break up the two lovers? The conventional idea that young aristocrats shouldn’t marry peasants? Wouldn’t his argument about the gillyvors suggest otherwise? And though he says it’s time to part them, he seems to encourage Florizel’s wooing at ll. 344ff. In response to F’s vows, his response: “Fairly offered.” BUT “Have you a father?” “Methinks a father/ Is at the nuptial of his son a guest/ That best becomes the table. And the fury between generations that characterizes comedy, but also fuels tragedy (think King Lear). Polixenes seems as crazy, as irrational as Leontes was in his jealousy: he’ll take his fury out on the old shepherd, on Perdita (“I’ll have thy beauty scratched out with briers”), and disinherit Florizel forever. Though Perdita was ready to deliver the real message of pastoral: “I was about to speak and tell him plainly/ The selfsame sun that shines on his court/ Hides not his visage from our cottage but/ Looks on all alike.” But the pastoral world has been destroyed, its meanings apparently lost.

The thought plickens Or the plot thickens – and gets wildly over complicated. And Autolycus gets put to use. Let’s briefly untangle it all: For some reason Florizel has a ship nearby. Camillo, wanting to get back to Sicily, tells F. that’s where ought to go with Perdita. And makes Autolycus change clothes with Florizel (is there a reason for this?). Autolycus can now appear a courtier and intimidate the old shepherd and his son into going to the king. But the king is not at his palace but has gone aboard a ship, apparently urged by Camillo to pursue Florizel to Sicily. Turns out that the shepherd and his son weren’t able to explain the finding of Perdita because everyone was too busy and seasick So all that is deferred until we get to Sicily.

Paulina’s discipline As the only one who knows the truth that will be revealed in the ending, Paulina lashes Leontes. Her female strength had been rejected by Leontes when she presented the baby. So now Leontes realizes he must bow to her understanding, her demands. Which is that he will never marry except with Paulina’s permission. And that’s not until “your first wife’s again in breath. Never till then.” An apparent impossibility. Female power now dominates and demands to be taken as authoritative. As Florizel is announced, Paulina insists that if Mamillius had lived, “he had paired/ Well with this lord.” They were the same age. And Leontes’ response, V.1.119ff. This fact almost makes him insane. A compensatory insistence on Florizel’s mother’s fidelity: F. looks exactly like his father (as Paulina had insisted the newborn Perdita resembled Leontes). A hint of the incest motif that had been part of Sh’s source: if Polixenes would grant “precious things as trifles,” Leontes would beg “your precious mistress.” And Paulina chides him for the thought: his eye “hath too much youth in ‘t.” And Hermione was “worth more such gazes.” The “recognition scene” is being set up.

Only to be taken away... The expected scene, in which Perdita is united with Leontes, is not shown! Only narrated by Autolycus, “first gentleman,” “second gentleman,” “third gentleman.” With the most teasing rhetoric: they seemed “to tear the cases of their eyes” etc. It’s simply incredible – “like an old tale” – who can believe it? The emphasis is on sight: “That which you hear, you’ll swear you see.” Didn’t see the meeting of the two kings? “Then have you lost the sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of.” But that’s all we get! “There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands.” Weirdly melodramatic? Antigonus? “Like an old tale still.” “If all the world could have seen’t, the woe had been universal. Then why aren’t we seeing this scene? What kind of incompetent playwright would set up such a scene, then not stage it for the audience?

The anti-theatrical context Anti-theatrical writers had criticized the stage for being “idolatrous.” The Reformation had insisted that religious scenes were not to be painted or sculpted because the second commandment had forbidden “graven images.” The literal iconoclasm of the English Reformation: beginning in the 1540s the churches were cleared of statues, paintings, anything visual. England became an iconoclast culture. Theater was objectionable because of the fulness of its sensual appeal, especially to sight. In 1583 Philip Stubbes had declared that all stage plays are “sucked out of the Devil’s tits to nourish us in idolatry, heathenry, and sin.” Anti-theatrical writers had declared that the visual character of theater is what makes it so dangerous. Anthony Munday (who would later become a playwright!): “There commeth much evil in at the ears, but more at the eyes; by these two open windows death breaketh into the soul.” Some had called the theaters the “school-house” or “chapel” of Satan. The Puritans especially were adamantly opposed to theater. Which continued right up until 1642; when they took control of the government, they finally closed the theaters. In a way, all this a backhanded compliment to the power of theater. The phenomenology of theater: physical, visual, sensual, requiring human bodies.

The statue The “statue” is the work of “that rare Italian master” Giulio Romano, an actual painter of the 16 th century (though not known as a sculptor). Again: Art and Nature – “who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape.” But Leontes notes that he has carved Hermione as she would be now: “Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing/ So aged as this seems.” “So much the more our carver’s excellence,” Paulina retorts. Theater, of course, is the “sculpture” that can put breath into its work, can make inanimate, dead things live. The real carver is the playwright – and also the theater company – that can make Hermione live. How much is “art,” how much is “nature”? Their “marble,” “paint” are human bodies, human voices. Think Polixenes and the gillyvors: “the art itself is nature.” Theater as the site where art and nature collaborate to create something more. Imagining life as it should be, or as even as it really is? Hence the high degree of self-reflexivity in Shakespeare’s art, especially here: yes, this is art, but also yes, this is life. And this is a response to the anti-theatrical writers, who would see theater as false, as idolatrous.

Paulina’s gallery The real reason we didn’t get the scene between Leontes, Perdita, Polixenes. And of course it’s fantastic, also “like an old tale still” (as romances were). But in being so, it’s highly self-aware about imagination, artfulness, reality. (As Leontes was not in his fantasy life.) A part of the point of the statue scene is its fantastic character. Could someone really stay hidden for 16 years, then return in this spectacular (or hokey?) way? But we’re also challenged by the terms of the spectacle to understand other things. The metaphorical/symbolic nature of the spectacle. What does it mean that Hermione “died”? That she has been turned to “stone”? What human acts, human attitudes can cause the “death” of love, affection, friendship, family? Or maybe even real death? And can love, affection, friendship, family ever be regenerated? Can what is, what seems, “stone” come alive? If so, how? Can Leontes really ever redeem what he once did? Can Nature regenerate what was lost?

The scene The stage of the Globe had a “discovery” space upstage. The curtain of which Paulina opens at l. 20. Statue imitators. Leontes confronts the past: “warm life” where “now it coldly stands.” The stone rebukes him. Perdita’s response: veneration. “Do not say ‘tis superstition, that/ I kneel and then implore her blessing.” The worst fears of the anti-theatricalists realized! Does Leontes collapse at this point: the responses of Camillo, Polixenes, Paulina? And he seems to impart life to the statue. Paulina could “afflict” him further – affliction has been her business for 16 years. And the choice she offers: leave or accept something really strange. Is she assisted by “wicked powers” – as the Puritans claimed about theater.

“It is required/ You do awake your faith” Paulina says this to Leontes, then to all the characters on stage. But does it spill over to the audience? Leontes’ command. And music: what was it? The slowness of the “awakening” – requires Paulina’s insistence. “I’ll fill your grave up.” “Bequeath to death your numbness.” Again, the story of her preservation is “like an old tale.” Hermione’s words – to the gods, but also to the theater? And Paulina’s fate? Well, this is a comedy after all, and Camillo is the honest, faithful courtier. The restoration of the “holy looks” between Hermione and Polixenes. And in “son-in-law” a recognition that Mamillius is only symbolically restored?