Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale:

A neat little pastoral

Elmo Fernando

DRAMA: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline and Pericles are believed to be his last plays. In fact the first three plays are the last which he wrote without any collaborator. Seven years after Shakespeare died his fellow actors Heminges and Condell published Shakespeare’s plays grouping them into Histories, Tragedies and Comedies.

They grouped Winter’s Tale and The Tempest as comedies and Cymbeline as a tragedy while omiting Pericles altogether. The Winter’s Taleseems to be rather a controversial work, though not a tragedy, but consisting tragic elements.

The play closes in reconciliation though the deaths of Antigonus and the innocent Mamillius itself from calling it a comedy. The plot seems to be rather incredible. The Winter’s Tale is one play that has baffled many critics such as Prof. Susan Snyder, Trevor Nunm, Peter Hall and Anne Barton. Mr. Nunm, refers to the character Leontes as a destructive nightmare performing in a wide gap of time.

He goes on to say that spring breaks through the grip of winter, love returns enabling Leontes to awaken his faith. Shakespeare absolves them of human frailties and pins all failures on man’s perdition. Peter Hall believes the resolution and forgiveness and the happy ending tamely fragile.

Anne Barton is more resolute and she comments that Hermione never speaks to Leontes in the last scene a situation most disturbing.... What could she possibly say? Once again the Emperor of Russia’s daughter takes the hand of the Sicilian King. Here the contract is initiated by her. It is also made in perfect silence. Hermione’s voiceless hand - tendered and accepted settles a promise for the future and a full consent.

Stanley Wells refers to the statue episode in The Winter’s Tale as absurd. Here at this point he says that the audience is convinced that they are not watching realistic drama and if one accepts the norms in which the play is written and responded to its poetry of both language and action one can experience the scene as the inevitable if the unexpected conclusion of all that has gone before.

The Winter’s Tale implies that the Bard has remarkable ideas in his mind, the effects of winter both the season in nature and the chilling results of Leontes’ jealousy. The principal themes of The Winter’s Tale are, one may say, first the distractive nature of jealousy.

This is sparked by what he thinks is a double betrayal by his wife and by the friend whom he calls his brother. Jealousy seems to be a vital experience and it still appears to be the theme of novels and also popular songs, Leontes ultimately realises its distressing effects.

The wrong I did myself, which was so much

That heirless it both made my kingdom and

destroyed the sweet ‘st companion (Act 5. Sc.1 Lines 9-11)

Hearing of the death of his son and his wife, Leontes mad jealousy changes to deep sorrow and repentance. He vows to spend the rest of his life grieving over their dead bodies - an act of repentance for his folly Come and Lead me to these sorrows”

After the winter of Leontes’ jealousy in Sicilia regeneration occurs in Bohemia’s spring. Death is conquered by apparent rebirth and Leontes wife and daughter live again. Perdita refers to the Greek myth of Proserpina. The relationship of this myth to Perdita herself is made explicit when she and Florizel are welcomed by Leontes.

As is the spring to the earth (Act 5, Sc 1, Line 151)

Perhaps the most striking expression of the theme of regeneration is Paulina’s command to the statue to

‘descend, be stone no more, approach

Strike all that look upon with marvel come

I’ll fill your grave up (Act 5, Sc. 3)

There is a belief that “The Winter’s Tale is a specifically Christian play, pointing to the long period of Leontes’ atonement and the resurrection of Hermione. It is certainly a play full of religious concepts ending in Paulina’s

It is required

You do awake your faith

(Act 5, Sc. 3)

Time becomes an important factor in the sense it becomes a character. At the end of the first half of the play Shakespeare Presents several traditional ways of picturing time. The bear which kills Antigonous perhaps represent the movement of time. The image of the old man and the young child indicate how life emerges only to die after going through the vicissitudes of life.

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page