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Engaging the language of the text(s)
The texts of The Winterâs Tale
Before embarking upon a serious examination of Shakespeareâs language, we need to understand that modern editions (such as the one you are using) are not accurate reproductions of the plays as they were written, performed and published in Shakespeareâs time. When editing texts that were first published in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, scholars make several modifications. They correct evident printing errors that might confuse us; regularize speech prefixes so that we know who is speaking (e.g. King Richardâs lines will be prefaced by Richard throughout the play, instead of alternating between Rich. and King); add stage directions that help us to imagine actions or sounds in performance; indicate asides (lines that characters speak to themselves, out of the hearing of other characters) so that we understand how characters are interacting on stage; update obsolete or inconsistent spellings so that we can more easily recognize words; and alter punctuation so that we are not misled by obsolete grammatical conventions. Editors do all these things for the very good reason of making four-hundred-year-old texts more accessible to todayâs readers. Some of these changes, however, can make it more difficult for us to access potentially meaningful details that appeared in the original published texts.
For instance, the early texts of The Merchant of Venice use different speech prefixes for Shylock, the Jewish usurer who is treated contemptuously in Christian Venice: sometimes he is Shy., and sometimes Jew. While the writers and printers of early modern texts were not as concerned with internal consistency as we are, the identification of this character as Jew suggests that Shakespeare (or whoever prepared his manuscript for publication) placed significant emphasis on the kind of difference represented by a Jew living in a Christian polity â a difference explicitly marked in the play when Shylock is identified as an âalienâ (non-citizen) in Venice (4.1.344). Alternatively, if the speech prefix Jew means to indicate that Shylock is a âtypicalâ (and wicked) representative of his faith, the prejudice encoded in the printed text of the play would thus mirror the prejudice expressed by the Christians within the play (Drakakis). So as not to reproduce an offensive sixteenth-century prejudice, every modern editor of The Merchant of Venice regularizes this speech prefix to Shylock. Through this reasonable accommodation to modern sensibilities, readers lose whatever insight the original presence of the Jew speech prefix might provide into the religious and ethnic politics of the play and of Shakespeareâs culture.
Because every editor makes their own choices about how to modernize an early text, no two editions will produce exactly the same âShakespeareâ. Editors also typically include interpretative aids such as glosses (explanations of words or lines), literary references, historical contexts, discursive notes, accounts of scholarly debates etc., that shape our perspectives on what we are reading. To further complicate matters, some of Shakespeareâs plays exist in more than one early printed version; when these early texts vary significantly from each other, editors must decide which version they will use as the basis of their own edition. For instance, the 1623 publication of King Lear differs in important respects from the 1608 publication of King Lear. Hence modern editors of King Lear print either the 1608 or the 1623 text; offer both texts as two distinct versions of the play; or fashion a hybrid text that takes elements from both early texts, thus presenting a âconflatedâ text that was never published in that form during the seventeenth century (Mowat, âFactsâ).
Unlike King Lear, The Winterâs Tale does not have a complex early publishing history. The two main formats in which Shakespeareâs plays were published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the quarto and the folio, terms that refer to the size of paper used in manufacturing the book. âFolioâ refers to a full-size sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves (or four pages) in a book. Since this sheet of paper was folded only once, the resulting pages are quite large. For a quarto, a full-size sheet of paper was folded twice to make four leaves (or eight pages); since the paper was folded twice, the resulting pages are smaller. A quarto was a small, relatively inexpensive book, the early modern equivalent of a paperback. Folios, by contrast, were large and very expensive; they were usually reserved for collections of significant poetic, philosophical, theological or historical texts. In 1623, several years after Shakespeareâs death, members of his acting company compiled thirty-six of his plays into a folio edition titled Mr. William Shakespeareâs Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Today, this book is simply called the âFirst Folioâ, since revised editions of the collection were later published in 1632 (the âSecond Folioâ), 1663 (the âThird Folioâ) and 1685 (the âFourth Folioâ). The First Folio is considered a landmark book because it was the first time that a folio comprised entirely of contemporary English plays was published in England. The First Folio was a risky financial endeavour, as a âlarge, expensive volume of plays was not guaranteed to sell well, and whatever profits might eventually come were certain to be delayed for many months after the initial investmentâ (Kastan 63).
Because The Winterâs Tale was not published in quarto form, the earliest authoritative text of the play that we have appears in the First Folio. The actors who collected and published Shakespeareâs plays in the First Folio made their own editorial interventions, some of which are doubtless invisible to us, which is not surprising considering the collaborative efforts that went into writing and publishing plays at the time. As David Scott Kastan explains, âShakespeare has become virtually the iconic name for authorship itself, but he wrote in circumstances in which his individual achievement was inevitably dispersed into â if not compromised by â the collaborations necessary for both play and book productionâ (16). Gary Taylor estimates that âanywhere from a quarter to a third of Shakespeareâs plays contain material written by other professional playwrightsâ (141), including Pericles, Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Macbeth and probably 1 Henry VI, Titus Andronicus, Edward III and Sir Thomas More (Jowett 106). Although we tend to stress Shakespeareâs originality, Taylor describes the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as âan expression of âartiginalityâ: the creativity of artisans who tinker with inherited forms and storiesâ (146). Shakespeare displayed âartiginalityâ in adapting Greeneâs Pandosto and many other kinds of stories for The Winterâs Tale. After his death, members of his company, including his erstwhile collaborator John Fletcher, revised, reshaped and edited his texts for both performance and publication (Kastan 68).
One possible intervention that Shakespeareâs company made while preparing the First Folio was the division of plays into five acts, since itâs unlikely that Shakespeare composed his plays with that structure in mind. By dividing the plays into five acts and marking those divisions with Latin text â so that âActus primus, Scena primaâ stands for âAct one, Scene oneâ â the compilers of the First Folio presented Shakespeareâs plays as authoritative âclassicalâ texts, comparable to the plays of the ancient Roman writers Terence and Seneca (Hamlet on the Ramparts). Although modern editors of The Winterâs Tale follow the lead of the Folio and of subsequent eighteenth-century editors in dividing the play into five acts, that division might occlude the organic structure of the play. Once you eliminate the imposition of a five-act structure, itâs easy to see The Winterâs Tale as a three-act play in which each act roughly aligns with the different generic categories we discussed in the Introduction. The first act of the play, including the banishment of Perdita and the deaths of Mamillius, Antigonus and Hermione, constitutes a tragedy. The second act of the play is a pastoral comedy focused on Perdita and Florizel in Bohemia. The third and final act, which returns to Sicily, provides the romance or tragicomic ending.
Listening to the language of the opening scene
A significant difference between the First Folio and modern Shakespeare editions concerns the amount of information that modern editors provide even before we start reading the play. Modern editions typically include an introduction, a list of characters â sometimes with detailed notes about each character â and an indication of the setting. The Winterâs Tale is among just a handful of plays in the First Folio that contain a list of characters. Yet since those lists, with one exception, are printed at the end of the plays, their evident intention is not to give readers information to help orient them during a first reading of the text. Seventeenth-century readers, just like theatre audiences, would have simply relied on the words spoken by characters to orient themselves at the beginning of a play.
What can the opening dialogue of The Winterâs Tale tell us? A character identified in the First Folio speech prefixes as Archidamus (but never named in the dialogue) provides an initial glimpse into matters of location, social status and unfolding events: âIf you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Siciliaâ (1.1.1-4). We can infer from this that Archidamus comes from Bohemia (âour Bohemiaâ) and Camillo from Sicily (âyour Siciliaâ). Both characters are ânowâ in Sicily, where Archidamus is performing âservicesâ; Camillo might in the future visit Bohemia on a âlike occasionâ. Camilloâs response indicates that these âservicesâ and âvisitsâ concern their respective monarchs: âI think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes himâ (1.1.5-7). Since Archidamus and Camillo seem well aware of the diplomatic schedules of their kings, seventeenth-century playgoers or readers would probably have identified them as courtiers. Moreover, they speak the refined language of diplomacy. Archidamus compliments Camillo by admitting that the Bohemians will be unable to match the opulent âentertainmentâ provided by the Sicilians. In the following dialogue, observe how the speakers are not exchanging information as much as they are performing courtly compliment:
ARCHIDAMUS
Wherein our entertainment shall shame us, we will be justified in our loves; for indeed â
CAMILLO
Beseech you â
ARCHIDAMUS
Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge. We cannot with such magnificence â in so rare â I know not what to say.
(1.1.8-13)
Even with these small words (âindeedâ, âBeseech youâ, âVerilyâ) the speakers demonstrate an eagerness to please. As we will discuss later, the failure of language to communicate truth is a major theme in The Winterâs Tale. For now, we might observe that Archidamus introduces this theme by declaring his inability to express his feelings about his nationâs inferior hospitality. How might this confessed failure of language itself comprise a performance of courtliness? What might Archidamus have to gain from such a confession?
Archidamus and Camillo also provide two crucial pieces of information that will colour our experience of the following scene, in which we meet the aforementioned kings of Bohemia and Sicily. First, Camillo rehearses the kingsâ long-standing âaffectionâ â an important word repeated throughout the play, as we will see later (1.1.24). Although separated by their familial and political duties, the kings have maintained their âlovesâ over the years through letters, gifts and âloving embassiesâ, and have figuratively âembraced as it were from the ends of opposed windsâ (1.1.28, 30-1). Camilloâs language establishes the intimate, lasting relationship between the kings that shockingly unravels in the following scene. Archidamus and Camillo also relay that the Sicilian kingâs âyoung prince, Mamilliusâ, holds âgreat promiseâ as the future king, and as such âphysics the subjectâ or gives new life to the Sicilian people (1.1.34, 38-9). The courtiers say nothing, however, about the kingâs wife, Hermione, or her pregnancy. What does their focus on Mamillius convey about the world of the play? How does this brief scene provide an important context for the impending tragedy of Mamilliusâs death? We might also observe that though it is generally true that Shakespeareâs aristocratic characters speak in the more âelevatedâ style of verse, Archidamus and Camillo speak in prose throughout this scene. Why might prose be a fitting medium for this conversation?
When I asked above what the focus on Mamilliusâs future promise might reveal about the world of the play, I meant to refer broadly to the values or ethos of the society depicted in The Winterâs Tale. In addition to that broad perspective, it is also productive to consider more specifically what the text reveals or does not reveal about the time(s) and place(s) in which the play is set. Aside from naming the monarchies of Bohemia and Sicily, the opening scene tells us little about these places or about the epoch in which the play occurs. London theatre companies generally did not use scenery or historically accurate costumes that would allow an audience visually to place a play in a particular country or time period; an actor would have worn contemporary finery whether he was portraying a fifteenth-century English king, as in Shakespeareâs Henry V, or a sixteenth-century Venetian duke, as in Othello. Especially with comedies and tragicomedies, even when a play is set in a particular place, such as the Vienna of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare shows little concern for historically accurate detail. Hence the locales in The Winterâs Tale have little relation to the seventeenth-century political or cultural situations of...