Inside Shakespeare’s mind :

WINTER’S TALE.... CYCLE OF LIFE

‘Daffodils that come before the swallow dare’..... (4. 4.) More than once Shakespeare has driven me up the wall in a couple of his plays. Why the playwright must insert two or three stories into one play and make it a hassle for the scholar and the student. In such plays why did he fail to sub-cut two incidents to melt into each other the way today’s cameramen do. Makes the play easier to follow and understand the grit of it and redeem all of us from the cycle of life he attempts to make which brings me to such one play..... the absurd, chronically adapted from elsewhere by an unknown writer of the day, The Winter’s Tale.

Don’t get me wrong; it is the way I look at it differently from you or my esteemed guru, Prof. Ashley Halpe.

Given the benefit of doubt, Winter’s Tale has story value in lukewarm temperature that I would say, at given moments, is quiet irregular and irrelevant. It is not that I am trying to pick the thorns but trying to asses how this elementary studied schoolboy became the miracle literary genius in the annals of English history and still remain the undisputed Master of all times.

Seized by a destroying fever, The Winter’s Tale is operated after a passage of sixteen years from the first terrifying attack that takes Leoantes to the rim of madness. The plot is in three movements, flowering like the Bohemian pastoral, lit up by speeches.

And naturally, Shakespeare had to fill the gaps to avoid the flaws. Sited in Sicilia and Bohemia, written in 1611, The Winter’s Tale do not do justice to the Bard’s playwriting.

Baptista – ‘Why, how now dame: enhance grows this innocence - Act.11, Sc. 1

Synopsis King of Bohemia, Polixenes who is a guest of the King of Sicilia, Leonates is falsely accused of having had an affair with his wife, Hermione who is expecting her second child. In his rage, Leonates takes his wife to task accusing her that it is not his child she is carrying. Leonates suggests to a Sicilian lord, Camillo to poison his guest but Camillio warns Polixenes and together, they depart at once to Bohemia.

Tragedy hits the family when Leonates orders his wife to be put into prison and their elder child Mamilius removed from her. Leonates chides his wife:

Leonates – With that she’s big with.... for ‘tis Polixenes has made thee swell thus

Hermione – But I’d say he had not. Add I’ll be sworn you would believe my saying. How’ver, you lean to the nayward.

L. - You my lords; Look on her, mark her well, be but about to say, ‘She’s a good lady and the justice of your hearts will thereto add ‘Tis pity, she’s not honest, honourable. Praise her but for this her without-door form which on my faith deserves high speech and straight. Act. 2, Sc. 1.

Thus condemned by her husband, Hermione is lead to prison where she gives birth to a daughter. Paulina brings the baby to show Leonates with the hope it will her heart. This angers Leonates who orders Paulina’s husband, Antigonus to abandon ‘the bastard by Polixenes’ in some desert place.

There is a trial set for Hermione and at the trial, a message from the Delphic Oracle declares the queen to be innocent. Leonates refuse to accept her innocence in spite of it and hears immediately the death of their young son, Mamillius at which Hermione faints and is carried out. When Paulina tells Leonates that his queen too is dead, he repents with a life-long mourning.

In the meantime, Antigonus had left the baby after naming her Perdita on the Bohemian shore with a bundle of gold while Paulina takes over Hermione to her care. A shepherd and his son finds the baby Perdita and takes her with them.

Sixteen years later in Bohemia Florizel, the son of the king is in love with Perdita brought up by a shepherdess. Polizenes disguise himself and along with Camillio, attends a sheep-shearing feast and threatens to disinherit his son unless he gives up Perdita whom he will send to prison otherwise. Camillio who knows every thing that happened, advices them to go to Sicilia and meet Leonates.

Everything is resolved when all meet with proof of Perdita’s discovery. Leonates who is taken to Paulina’s chapel finds a statue of Hermione and in reality, turns to be Hermione whom Paulina had looked after for years. They too are reunited.

An absurd, stupid story: this Winter’s Tale

In Performance – Acted haphazardly by actors just like the story’s contents, The Winter’s Tale does not appear to have been boarded for over a century before 1741 when there was this Goodman Field’s production at Covent Garden. Garrick made a comeback with this play in 1756 at Drury Lane The play was mainly performed with the fourth and fifth acts. The rest of the 150 lines were prorogued by Garrick himself as Leonates. This was sustained until the beginning of the 19th century. Next, Kimble brought back most of the original to Drury Lane in 1804 with Sarah Siddons as Hermoine.

Few years later, a sensation was caused when Mary Anderson doubled for Perdita and Hermoine in 1887 at the Lyceum. Then again at Her Majesty’s in 1906, Ellen Terry was at her professional best as Hermoine.

And so with time, The Winter’s Tale kept flourishing until it reached Stratford’s Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992-3.

Elsewhere – Henry Daniel and Eva Le Gallienne as Leonates and Hermoine had a triumphant revival at the Thatre Guild in New York. In 1945-6 the famous Hollywood star, Chrostopher Plummer was Leonates at Stratford, Ontario.

In the film world, The Winter’s Tale came under the direction of Frank Dunlop. The breezy and flowing musical setting, ‘when daffodiles begin to peer’ .... was scored by John Ireland.