The Winter's Tale

A Commentary on the Structure

Fitzroy Pyle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136564680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1969. Critics have in the past described The Winter's Tale as a work of "haphazard structure". More recent criticism has defended the structure of the play and this work shows that the evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare took infinite pains with the choice and disposition of the materials of The Winter's Tale. The scene-by-scene commentary considers The Winter's Tale in isolation, but prologue, epilogue and appendix place it in the context of related plays, and discuss, among others, the problem of genre as it affects the play.

Act One Scene One

The Winter’s Tale unfolds its own story. Unlike Cymbeline and The Tempest, which embrace a long train of events lying in the past, it does not require an early scene of recapitulation. Yet it does not start with Leontes and Polixenes, but with an unassuming little scene between two gentlemen representing the two kingdoms, and relieving the kings of the need to create their own atmosphere ab initio in the next scene.

The tone is at once courtly and intimate, their mood one of unmixed satisfaction. The royal visit is in progress, and

Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. … [Mamillius] is a gallant child; one that, indeed, physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh.

(21, 37)

It is a rosy picture. Too good to be true, we may think; and looking back we can see striking ironies in the detail of the scene.¹ But we must not do so without seeing the countervailing irony as well, that in the normal world of this play goodness is truth, that Camillo and Archidamus represent what is the common courtly standpoint throughout the action. The immediate function of the scene is to present, in a dialect indicative of a courtly and pastoral play, a state of civilized normality. This serves as a background to the coming bestial abnormality.

Derek Traversi (p. 262) detects ambiguity in Camillo’s statement that the kings’ friendship ‘cannot choose but branch’, and interprets it as suggesting that ‘though rooted and natural in its origins’ their friendship ‘bears within itself the cause of future disunion’. That suggestion is quite out of keeping with Camillo’s cheerful mood: if he were intended to imply the possibility of future dissention he would be far from happy about it. A meaning for his words consistent with his optimistic frame of mind would be this: that the kings were brought up together like plants trained on a wall, between which was rooted the plant of affection; as a result of the nurture given then, this plant cannot choose but branch rightly now, holding the two kings together.

Later images of Camillo’s tend to confirm this reading:

they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds.¹

(28)

It seems a mistake, therefore, to look for ambiguity in Camillo’s speeches. It is Leontes who in his abnormality will deal in ambiguities. Camillo and Archidamus are clear and direct in their outlook: it is the healthy, straightforward thing for a root to give a branch: ‘no root, no branch’ is a proverb. They represent normality in a civilized world, a world in which nature is not given the choice of whether to ‘branch’ or not: it cannot choose: it is trained. There is no sign that the kings’ friendship ‘bears within itself the cause of future disunion’.¹

That is the supreme irony: there is nothing inherent in the situation, as it has been presented to us, to show that abnormality may intrude in spite of training. Hermione has not been mentioned. Without her, so far as the play’s postulates go, everything in the Garden of Sicilia would have remained idyllic.

With an exchange of jests to set off the regal stateliness of the principal characters’ entrance the preliminaries are concluded.

Scene Two

I

Nevill Coghill interestingly points a contrast between the opening scenes of this play and of other plays of Shakespeare’s. In King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, he says, we are prepared for what we are about to see (‘technique of gratifying expectation raised’)—in The Winter’s Tale for what we are about not to see (‘technique of prepared surprise’). This sharp distinction is, however, seldom found, I believe, outside pure comedy. In all three of the plays in question we see both what we are led to expect and what we are not led to expect: Cornwall, Albany, and the division of Lear’s kingdom, but also Cordelia and a trial of affection; Antony a strumpet’s fool, but also magnificent folly, nobleness in ignobility; the kingly ‘brothers’, but also Hermione—an idyllic state, but also a Fall.

She enters on her husband’s arm, and is soon known to be the Queen of Sicilia, for the other king identifies himself at once by saying that he must now return home. This intention is a New Fact of which we received no warning in the first scene, and which, thus abruptly brought to our attention, we may expect to be developed, perhaps in connexion with that accompanying New Fact, Hermione.

Compared with II, i, where Leontes is to make an exhibition of himself, this scene is a relatively private one. The court stand aloof.¹ Yet though it is an intimate scene between friends, the friends are kings of romance, making their first appearance in the play, and their looks, bearing and speech must proclaim their station. They call one another brother; but they use the formal language of regal dignity.

Polixenes’ elaborate opening speech, starting, ‘Nine changes of the watery star hath been / The shepherd’s note …’, arouses the expectation, perhaps, of a play in a courtly pastoral mode, and transparently conceals amid the flowers of pastoral rhetoric what will be a serpent of suspicion to some members of the audience: his visit has lasted for nine months. If Sicilia is brief in comparison with Bohemia’s elaborate courtesy, that is rather to be expected in the circumstances, and has been adumbrated at the prose level of the scene before by the contrasting attitudes of Archidamus the guest, extravagant and profuse in gratitude, and Camillo who, playing the deprecating host, can be much blunter (‘You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely’).

II

It has been made a question whether Shakespeare intends Leontes to be shown as jealous from the beginning of the scene or as growing jealous before our eyes. Frank Kermode thinks that

Perhaps [Shakespeare] did not care; his purpose is to show peace and courtesy destroyed by a storm of diseased passion comparable with the Fall, a betrayal like that of Judas.¹

As regards the dramatist’s immediate purpose, that is well said, but in regard to his workmanship Shakespeare was much more careful than Professor Kermode’s words would seem to suggest.² And then there is Shakespeare’s ultimate purpose to bear in mind: peace and courtesy, though destroyed, are to return, to rise from their own ruin. Is it not dramatically essential that we should see Leontes in his true likeness before he is distorted, so that when he comes to himself, purged, we may recognize him? If he is to be saved, he must be seen to be worth saving. Surely, to look no further than the present scene in theatrical performance (which, we must agree, is the true test), the filth which he pours out in the middle of it demands a gracious opening for him in contrast, so that the scene may be given light and shade. With what other view of the scene can one reconcile Hermione’s expression of love for her husband (42 and his for her (88)? Not, certainly, with ‘the livid face of Leontes’ which Dover Wilson sees in the background during the following much-quoted dialogue, making the passage, he thinks, ‘dramatically a masterpiece of irony’:³

Hermione	Not your gaoler then, But your kind hostess. Come, I’ll question you Of my lord’s tricks, and yours, when you were boys. You were pretty lordings then?
Polixenes	We were, fair queen, Two lads that thought there was no more behind, But such a day to-morrow as to-day, And to be boy eternal.
Hermione	Was not my lord The verier wag o’ th’ two?
Polixenes	We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun, And bleat the one at th’ other: what we chang’d Was innocence for innocence: we knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, [no,] nor dream’d

That any did. Had we pursu’d that life,

And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d

With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven

Boldly ‘not guilty’, the imposition clear’d

Hereditary ours.

(59)

Thus to recall in pastoral terms the contrast of childhood innocence and adult perversity when (though no one can know it) Leontes’ fall is immanent may indeed be called a masterpiece of irony, even without the addition of a background. But, as it happens, there is a background, or so I believe, and a highly appropriate one: not Leontes’ livid face, but Leontes playing happily with his son.¹

Polixenes has announced his departure. Leontes has entreated him to stay longer, and, not succeeding, has drawn his wife into the conversation, enlisting her help. She starts well, as Leontes notes with satisfaction—’Well said, Hermione’ (33)—and then for fifty lines there is no further word from him. What is he doing? He cannot be standing by or he would be included in the conversation. He cannot be just having an aimless word with Camillo or another courtier. It must be that he is intended to play with Mamillius, the only other member of the royal party, who if he were not drawn into the action at this point would be left unoccupied for more than half the time he is on the stage.²

This provides an interval during which Hermione and Polixenes can chat familiarly on, as in the passage just quoted, which continues:

Hermione	By this we gather You have tripp’d since.
Polixenes	O my most sacred lady, Temptations have since then been born to’s: for In those unfledg’d days was my wife a girl; Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes Of my young play-fellow.
Hermione	Grace to boot! Of this make no conclusion, lest you say Your queen and I are devils. Yet go on; Th’offences we have made you do, we’ll answer, If you first sinn’d with us, and that with us You did continue fault, and that you slipp’d not With any but with us.

It is at this point that Leontes, having abandoned his interlude with the child, comes forward to ask, ‘Is he won yet?’ There can be no reasonable doubt, as Dover Wilson says, that Shakespeare intended Leontes to be seen as overhearing Hermione’s last words, and that he wrote them as he did so that Leontes could be seen as misinterpreting them. Surprise and mystification are all that the actor need show (‘What an odd thing to say. What can she be talking about?’). These together with resentment (‘At my request she would not’...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Prologue
• Commentary
• Epilouge
• Appendix I Further Notes on Pandosto and The Winter's Tale
• Appendix II The Blackfriars theatre, and the question of genre
• Index