The play has been intermittently popular, revived in productions in various forms and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance history, beginning after a long interval with David Garrick in his adaptation Florizel and Perdita (first performed in 1753 and published in 1756). The Winter's Tale was revived again in the 19th century, when the fourth "pastoral" act was widely popular. In the second half of the 20th century The Winter's Tale in its entirety, and drawn largely from the First Folio text, was often performed, with varying degrees of success.
Contents
Characters
Sicilia
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Bohemia
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Synopsis
John Fawcett as Autolycus in "The Winter's Tale" (1828) by Thomas Charles Wageman
An ink drawing of Act II, Scene iii: Paulina imploring Leontes to have
mercy on his daughter, Perdita. Illustration was designed for an edition
of Lamb's Tales, copyrighted 1918.
Furious at their escape, Leontes now publicly accuses his wife of infidelity, and declares that the child she is bearing must be illegitimate. He throws her in prison, over the protests of his nobles, and sends two of his lords, Cleomenes and Dion, to the Oracle at Delphi for what he is sure will be confirmation of his suspicions. Meanwhile, the queen gives birth to a girl, and her loyal friend Paulina takes the baby to the king, in the hopes that the sight of the child will soften his heart. He grows angrier, however, and orders Paulina's husband, Lord Antigonus, to take the child and abandon it in a desolate place. Cleomenes and Dion return from Delphi with word from the Oracle and find Hermione publicly and humiliatingly put on trial before the king. She asserts her innocence, and asks for the word of the Oracle to be read before the court. The Oracle states categorically that Hermione and Polixenes are innocent, Camillo an honest man, and that Leontes will have no heir until his lost daughter is found. Leontes shuns the news, refusing to believe it as the truth. As this news is revealed, word comes that Leontes' son, Mamillius, has died of a wasting sickness brought on by the accusations against his mother. Hermione, meanwhile, falls in a swoon, and is carried away by Paulina, who subsequently reports the queen's death to her heartbroken and repentant husband. Leontes vows to spend the rest of his days atoning for the loss of his son,his abandoned daughter, and his queen.
Antigonus, meanwhile, abandons the baby on the coast of Bohemia, reporting that Hermione appeared to him in a dream and bade him name the girl Perdita. He leaves a fardel (a bundle) by the baby containing gold and other trinkets which suggest that the baby is of noble blood. A violent storm suddenly appears, wrecking the ship on which Antigonus arrived. He wishes to take pity on the child, but is chased away in one of Shakespeare's most famous stage directions: "Exit, pursued by a bear." (It is not known whether Shakespeare used a real bear from the London bear-pits, or an actor in bear costume.) Fortunately, Perdita is rescued by a shepherd and his son, also known as "Clown."
An engraving of Florizel and Perdita by Charles Robert Leslie.
In Sicilia, Leontes is still in mourning. Cleomenes and Dion plead with him to end his time of repentance because the kingdom needs an heir. Paulina, however, convinces the king to continue his penance until she alone finds him a wife. Florizel and Perdita arrive, and they are greeted effusively by Leontes. Florizel pretends to be on a diplomatic mission from his father, but his cover is blown when Polixenes and Camillo, too, arrive in Sicilia. The meeting and reconciliation of the kings and princes is reported by gentlemen of the Sicilian court: how the Old Shepherd raised Perdita, how Antigonus met his end, how Leontes was overjoyed at being reunited with his daughter, and how he begged Polixenes for forgiveness. The Old Shepherd and Young Shepherd, now made gentlemen by the kings, meet Autolycus, who asks them for their forgiveness for his roguery. Leontes, Polixenes, Camillo, Florizel and Perdita then go to Paulina's house in the country, where a statue of Hermione has been recently finished. The sight of his wife's form makes Leontes distraught, but then, to everyone's amazement, the statue shows signs of vitality; it is Hermione, restored to life. As the play ends, Perdita and Florizel are engaged, and the whole company celebrates the miracle. Despite this happy ending typical of Shakespeare's comedies and romances, the impression of the unjust death of young prince Mamillius lingers to the end, being an element of unredeemed tragedy, in addition to the years wasted in separation.
Sources
Autolycus (1836) by Charles Robert Leslie
There are minor changes in names, places, and minor plot details, but the largest changes lie in the survival and reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes (Greene's Pandosto) at the end of the play. The character equivalent to Hermione in Pandosto dies after being accused of adultery, while Leontes' equivalent looks back upon his deeds (including an incestuous fondness for his daughter) and slays himself. The survival of Hermione, while presumably intended to create the last scene's coup de théâtre involving the statue, creates a distinctive thematic divergence from Pandosto. Greene follows the usual ethos of Hellenistic romance, in which the return of a lost prince or princess restores order and provides a sense of humor andclosure that evokes Providence's control. Shakespeare, by contrast, sets in the foreground the restoration of the older, indeed aged, generation, in the reunion of Leontes and Hermione. Leontes not only lives, but seems to insist on the happy ending of the play.
It has been suggested that the use of a pastoral romance from the 1590s indicates that at the end of his career, Shakespeare felt a renewed interest in the dramatic contexts of his youth. Minor influences also suggest such an interest. As in Pericles, he uses a chorus to advance the action in the manner of the naive dramatic tradition; the use of a bear in the scene on the Bohemian seashore is almost certainly indebted to Mucedorus, a chivalric romance revived at court around 1610.
Eric Ives, the biographer of Anne Boleyn (1986), believes that the play is really a parallel of the fall of the queen, who was beheaded on false charges of adultery on the orders of her husband Henry VIII in 1536. There are numerous parallels between the two stories – including the fact that one of Henry's closest friends, Sir Henry Norreys, was beheaded as one of Anne's supposed lovers and he refused to confess in order to save his life, claiming that everyone knew the Queen was innocent. If this theory is followed then Perdita becomes a dramatic presentation of Anne's only daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.
Date and text
The first page of The Winter's Tale, printed in the Second Folio of 1632
In the late 18th century, Edmund Malone suggested that a "book" listed in the Stationers' Register on 22 May 1594, under the title "a Wynters nightes pastime" might have been Shakespeare's, though no copy of it is known. In 1933, Dr. Samuel A. Tannenbaum wrote that Malone subsequently "seems to have assigned it to 1604; later still, to 1613; and finally he settled on 1610–11. Hunter assigned it to about 1605."
Analysis and criticism
Title of the play
A play called "The Winter's Tale" would immediately indicate to contemporary audiences that the work would present an "idle tale", an old wives' tale not intended to be realistic and offering the promise of a happy ending. The title may have been inspired by George Peele's play The Old Wives' Tale of 1590, in which a storyteller tells "a merry winter's tale" of a missing daughter. However, early in The Winter's Tale, the royal heir, Mamillius, warns that "a sad tale's best for winter." Indeed, his mother is soon put on trial for treason and adultery—and his death is announced seconds after she is shown to have been faithful and Leontes's accusations unfounded.Debates
Perdita by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys
A mid-19th-century painting of the statue of Hermione coming to life
The statue
While the language Paulina uses in the final scene evokes the sense of a magical ritual through which Hermione is brought back to life, there are several passages which suggest a far likelier case – that Paulina hid Hermione at a remote location to protect her from Leontes' wrath and that the re-animation of Hermione does not derive from any magic. The Steward announces that the members of the court have gone to Paulina's dwelling to see the statue; Rogero offers this exposition: "I thought she had some great matter there in hand, for she [Paulina] hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house" (5.2. 102-105). Further, Leontes is surprised that the statue is "so much wrinkled", unlike the Hermione he remembers. Paulina answers his concern by claiming that the age-progression attests to the "carver's excellence", which makes her look "as [if] she lived now." Hermione later asserts that her desire to see her daughter allowed her to endure 16 years of separation: "thou shalt hear that I, / Knowing by Paulina that the oracle / Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved / Myself to see the issue" (5.3.126–129).However, the action of 3.2 calls into question the "rational" explanation that Hermione was spirited away and sequestered for 16 years. Hermione swoons upon the news of Mamilius' death, and is rushed from the room. Paulina returns after a short monologue from Leontes, bearing the news of Hermione's death. After some discussion, Leontes demands to be led toward the bodies of his wife and son: "Prithee, bring me / To the dead bodies of my queen and son: / One grave shall be for both: upon them shall / The causes of their death appear, unto / Our shame perpetual" (3.2) Paulina seems convinced of Hermione's death, and Leontes' order to visit both bodies and see them interred is never called into question by later events in the play.
The seacoast of Bohemia
A fanciful 1896 map by Gelett Burgess showing Bohemia's seacoast
In 1891, Edmund O. von Lippmann pointed out that "Bohemia" was also a rare name for Apulia in southern Italy. However, in Shakespeare's lifetime, Apulia was a province of the Kingdom of Naples. More influential was Thomas Hanmer's 1744 argument that Bohemia is a printed error for Bithynia, an ancient nation in Asia Minor; this theory was adopted in Charles Kean's influential 19th-century production of the play, which featured a resplendent Bithynian court. At the time of the medieval Kingdom of Sicily, however, Bithynia was long extinct and its territories were controlled by the Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, the play alludes to Hellenistic antiquity (e.g. the Oracle of Delphos, the names of the kings), so that the "Kingdom of Sicily" may refer to Greek Sicily not to the Kingdom of Sicily of later medieval times.
The pastoral genre is not known for precise verisimilitude, and, like the assortment of mixed references to ancient religion and contemporary religious figures and customs, this possible inaccuracy may have been included to underscore the play's fantastical and chimeric quality. As Andrew Gurr puts it, Bohemia may have been given a seacoast "to flout geographical realism, and to underline the unreality of place in the play".
Another theory explaining the existence of the seacoast in Bohemia offered by C. H. Herford is suggested in Shakespeare's chosen title of the play. A winter's tale is something associated with parents telling children stories of legends around a fireside: by using this title, it implies to the audience that these details should not be taken too seriously.
In the novel Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson reference is made to the land of Seaboard Bohemia in the context of an obvious parody of Shakespeare's apparent liberties with geography in the play.
The Isle of Delphos
Likewise, Shakespeare's apparent mistake of placing the Oracle of Delphi on a small island has been used as evidence of Shakespeare's limited education. However, Shakespeare again copied this locale directly from "Pandosto". Moreover, the erudite Robert Greene was not in error, as the Isle of Delphos does not refer to Delphi, but to the Cycladic island of Delos, the mythical birthplace of Apollo, which from the 15th to the late 17th century in England was known as "Delphos". Greene's source for an Apollonian oracle on this island likely was the Aeneid, in which Virgil wrote that Priam consulted the Oracle of Delos before the outbreak of the Trojan War and that Aeneas after escaping from Troy consulted the same Delian oracle regarding his future.
An 1807 print of Act III, Scene iii: Exit Antigonus chased by a bear.
The Bear
The play contains one of the most famous Shakespearean stage directions: Exit, pursued by a bear, presaging the offstage death of Antigonus. It is not known whether Shakespeare used a real bear from the London bear-pits, or an actor in bear costume. The Royal Shakespeare Company, in one production of this play, used a large sheet of silk which moved and created shapes, to symbolise both the bear and the gale in which Antigonus is travelling.Dildos
One comic moment in the play deals with a servant not realising that poetry featuring references to dildos is vulgar, presumably from not knowing what the word means. This play and Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist (1610) are typically cited as the first usage of the word in publication. The Alchemist was printed first, but the debate about the date of the play's composition makes it unclear which was the first scripted use of the word, which is much older.Performance history
The earliest recorded performance of the play was recorded by Simon Forman, the Elizabethan "figure caster" or astrologer, who noted in his journal on 11 May 1611 that he saw The Winter's Tale at the Globe playhouse. The play was then performed in front of King James at Court on 5 November 1611. The play was also acted at Whitehall during the festivities preceding Princess Elizabeth's marriage to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, on 14 February 1613. Later Court performances occurred on 7 April 1618, 18 January 1623, and 16 January 1634.
A depiction of Mrs. Mattocks as Hermione, from a 1779 performance at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.
One of the best remembered modern productions was staged by Peter Brook in London in 1951 and starred John Gielgud as Leontes. Other notable stagings featured John Philip Kemble in 1811, Samuel Phelps in 1845, and Charles Kean in an 1856 production that was famous for its elaborate sets and costumes. Johnston Forbes-Robertson played Leontes memorably in 1887, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree took on the role in 1906. The longest-running Broadway production starred Henry Daniell and Jessie Royce Landis and ran for 39 performances in 1946. In 1980, David Jones, a former Associate Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company chose to launch his new theatre company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) with The Winter's Tale starring Brian Murray supported by Jones' new company at BAM In 1983, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted a production based on the First Folio text at The Shakespeare Center in Manhattan. In 1993 Adrian Noble won a Globe Award for Best Director for his Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation, which then was successfully brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1994.
In 2009, four separate productions were staged:
- Sam Mendes inaugurated his transatlantic "Bridge Project" directing The Winter's Tale with a cast featuring Simon Russell Beale (Leontes), Rebecca Hall (Hermione), Ethan Hawke (Autolycus), Sinéad Cusack (Paulina), and Morven Christie (Perdita).
- The Royal Shakespeare Company
- Theatre Delicatessen also staged productions of The Winter's Tale in 2009. The play is in the repertory of the Stratford Festival of Canada and was seen at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Central Park, in 2010.
- The Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey presented a production as part of their annual Shakespeare in the Parks series. The action was set in central Europe during the early 1900s era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but with a decidedly diverse cast. African American actors Tony White played Leontes, Deirdre Ann Johnson played Hermione, and Monica Jones in a dual role of Mammilus and Perdita. Also, rounding out the diverse cast was Angela Liao as Paulina.
Adaptations
Main article: List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations
There have been two film versions, one silent version in 1910 and a 1967 version starring Laurence Harvey as Leontes.An "orthodox" BBC production was televised in 1981. It was produced by Jonathan Miller, directed by Jane Howell and starred Robert Stephens as Polixenes and Jeremy Kemp as Leontes.
In 2014 choreographer Christopher Wheeldon created a full-length ballet based on the play for the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London.
References
- WT comes last, following Twelfth Night which uncharacteristically ends with a blank recto page, suggesting to Arden editor J.H.P. Pafford there was some hesitation as to where WT belonged at the time of printing the Folio. (J.H.P. Pafford, ed. The Winter's Tale (Arden Shakespeare) 3rd ed. 1933:xv–xvii.)
- William W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, New York, Macmillan, 1931; pp. 9–13.
- C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908; pp. 103–26.
- Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn 2004:421: in spite of other scholars' rejection of any parallels between Henry VIII and Leontes, asserts "the parallels are there", noting his article "Shakespeare and History: divergencies and agreements", in Shakespeare Survey 38 (1985:19–35), p 24f.
- F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 532.
- Pafford, J.H.P., ed. "Introduction", The Winter's Tale Arden Shakespeare 2nd. series (1963, 1999), xxiii.
- Malone, Edmund. "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written," The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes. Eds. Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. 2nd ed. London, 1778, Vol. I: 269–346; 285.
- Tannenbaum, "The Forman Notes", Shakespearean Scraps, 1933
- John Olde (one of the translators of Udall's New Testament) in 1556: "olde wiues fables and winter tales". Cited in "winter, 5a". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). 1989.
- Bate, Jonathan; Rasmussen, Eric (2007). Complete Works. London: Macmillan. p. 698. ISBN 978-0-230-00350-7.
- Act 2 scene 1
- Wylie, Laura J., ed. (1912). The Winter's Tale. New York: Macmillan. p. 147. OCLC 2365500.
Shakespeare follows Greene in giving Bohemia a seacoast, an error that has provoked the discussion of critics from Ben Jonson on.
- Ben Jonson, 'Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden', in Herford and Simpson, ed. Ben Jonson, vol. 1, p. 139.
- Greene's 'Pandosto' or 'Dorastus and Fawnia': being the original of Shakespeare's 'Winter's tale', P. G. Thomas, editor. Oxford University Press, 1907
- See J. H. Pafford, ed. The Winter's Tale, Arden Edition, 1962, p. 66
- Bate, Jonathan (2008). "Shakespeare and Jacobean Geopolitics". Soul of the Age. London: Viking. p. 305. ISBN 978-0-670-91482-1.
- Edmund O. von Lippmann, 'Shakespeare's Ignorance?', New Review 4 (1891), 250–4.
- Thomas Hanmer, The Works of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1743–4), vol. 2.
- Andrew Gurr, 'The Bear, the Statue, and Hysteria in The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983), p. 422.
- See C.H. Herford, ed. The Winter's Tale, The Warwick Shakespeare edition, p.xv.
- Terence Spencer, Shakespeare's Isle of Delphos, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr., 1952), pp. 199–202.
- Virgil, Aeneid, In. 73–101
- The main bear-garden in London was the Paris Garden at Southwark, near the Globe Theatre.
- See, for instance, "dildo1". OED Online (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1989. Retrieved 21 April 2009., which cites Jonson's 1610 edition of The Alchemist ("Here I find ... The seeling fill'd with poesies of the candle: And Madame, with a Dildo, writ o' the walls.": Act V, scene iii) and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (dated 1611, "He has the prettiest Loue-songs for Maids ... with such delicate burthens of Dildo's and Fadings.": Act IV, scene iv).
- The first reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is Thomas Nashe's Choise of Valentines or the Merie Ballad of Nash his Dildo (c. 1593); in the 1899 edition, the following sentence appears: "Curse Eunuke dilldo, senceless counterfet."
- All dates new style.
- Halliday, pp. 532–3.
- Four previous productions in New York, the earliest that of 1795 are noted in the Internet Broasdway Database; The Winter's Tale has not played on Broadway since 1946.
- "Brooklyn Bets on Rep", T. E. Kalem, Time Magazine, 3 March 1980
- "Critics Notebook", Ben Brantley, The New York Times, 22 April 1994.
- "RSC listing". Rsc.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
- Francesca Whiting (2009-04-23). "The Stage review of [Theatre Delicatessen]'s ''The Winter's Tale''". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
- "Hudson Shakespeare Company Returns". The Connecticut Post. June 26, 2009.
- "Tara Fitzgerald To Make RSC Debut In Lucy Bailey's The Winter's Tale". Royal Shakespear Company. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
- The Winter's Tale (1910)
- The Winter's Tale (1968)
- "The Winter's Tale (1981, TV)". IMDB. Retrieved 22 January 2010.
- Jennings, Luke. "The Winter's Tale review – 'a ballet to keep'". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 3 June 2014.
Sources
- Brooke, C. F. Tucker. 1908. The Shakespeare Apocrypha, Oxford, Clarendon press, 1908; pp. 103–26.
- Chaney, Edward, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance 2nd ed.(Routledge, 2000).
- Gurr, Andrew. 1983. "The Bear, the Statue, and Hysteria in The Winter's Tale", Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983), p. 422.
- Halliday, F. E. 1964. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 532.
- Hanmer, Thomas. 1743. The Works of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1743–4), vol. 2.
- Isenberg, Seymour. 1983. "Sunny Winter", The New York Shakespeare Society Bulletin, (Dr. Bernard Beckerman, Chairman; Columbia University) March 1983, pp. 25–26.
- Jonson, Ben. "Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden", in Herford and Simpson, ed. Ben Jonson, vol. 1, p. 139.
- Kalem, T. E. 1980. "Brooklyn Bets on Rep", Time Magazine, 3 March 1980.
- Lawrence, William W. 1931. Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, Macmillan, New York. OCLC 459490669
- Von Lippmann, Edmund O. 1891. "Shakespeare's Ignorance?", New Review 4 (1891), 250–4.
- McDowell, W. Stuart. 1983. Director's note in the program for the Riverside Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale, New York City, 25 February 1983.
- Pafford, John Henry Pyle. 1962, ed. The Winter's Tale, Arden Edition, 1962, p. 66.
- Tannenbaum, Dr. Samuel A. 1933. " Shakespearean Scraps", chapter: "The Forman Notes" (1933).
- Verzella, Massimo, "Iconografia femminile in The Winter's Tale", Merope, XII, 31 (sett chism and anti-Petrarchism in The Winter's Tale" in Merope, numero speciale dedicato agli Studi di Shakespeare in Italia, a cura di Michael Hattaway e Clara Mucci, XVII, 46–47 (Set. 2005– Gen. 2006), pp. 161–179.
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