Shakespeare's The winter's tale

Front matter

English Classics, Etc.,

Classes in English Literature, Reading, Grammar, etc.

Each Volume contains a S. etch of the Author^s Life, Prefatory and Explanatory Notes, etc., etc.

Introduction To

THE WINTER'S TALE.

The Winter's Tale appears to have first seen public light in the spring of 1611 ; and the internal evidence from style and thought shows, even if no external evidence were forthcoming, that it must have been one of Shakespeare's latest plays, written not merely when his wisdom of life and his power over language were most complete, but when, after all his struggles, inward and outward, he had reached that perfection of peace which his latest plays so delightfully reflect.

For the materials of his plot, Shakespeare has, as frequently, been content to take a well known novel of the time, in the present instance, that of Pandosto* or Dorastus and Fawnia, by Robert Greene; but, though closely following the story in its main incidents, more especially in the earlier portions, he has introduced characters (Antigonus, Paulina, and Autolycus) which have no antitypes in the novel, and by his spiritual treatment of the subject has made it as much his own

INTRODUCTION. n

as if he had drawn upon his invention for the whole story.

In regard to the general spirit of The Winter's Tale, no other criticism with which I am acquainted sums it up so well as Professor Dowden's words when, in reference to the plays of Shakespeare's final period, he speaks of their " pathetic yet august serenity." Of the same group he further remarks that in each of them " While grievous errors of the heart are shown to us, and wrongs of man as cruel as those of the great tragedies, at the end there is a resolution of the dissonance, a reconciliation. This is the word which interprets Shakespeare's latest plays — reconciliation, ' word over all, beautiful as the sky.' It is not, as in the earlier comedies — The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado abotU Nothing, As You Like It, and others — a mere denouement. The resolution of the discords in these latest plays is not a mere stage necessity, or a necessity of composition, resorted to by the dramatist to effect an ending of his play, and little interesting his imagination or his heart. Its significance here is ethical and spiritual ; it is a moral necessity." And again, " Over the beauty of youth and the love of youth, there is shed, in these plays of Shakespeare's final period, a clear yet tender luminousness, not elsewhere to be perceived in his writings. In his earlier plays, Shakespeare writes concerning young men and maidens, their loves, their mirth, their griefs, as one who is among them, who has a lively, personal interest in their concerns, who can make merry with them, treat them familiarly, and, if need be, can mock them into good sense. There is nothing in these early plays wonderful, strangely beautiful, pathetic about youth and its joys and sorrows. In the histories and tragedies, as was to be expected, more massive, broader, or more profound objects of interest engaged the poet's imagination. But in these latest plays, the beautiful pathetic light is always present. There are the sufferers, aged, experienced, tried — Queen Katherine, Prospero, Hermione. And over against these there are the children absorbed in their happy and exquisite egoism, — Perdita and Miranda, Florizel and Ferdinand, and the boys of old Belarius." Greene's novel, so far from resembling Helena's description of herself and Hermia,

" Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition, 1 '

is in reality two stories lightly linked together by the circumstance that the same persons play a part in both. The former of the two stories, that of Leontes' jealousy and his vengeance upon Hermione, occupies the first three acts; the latter story, dealing with the loves of Perdita and Florizel, and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes born of those loves, completes the play. Gervinus very aptly speaks of the "wasp-like body of Greene's story," and remarks, " While Shakespeare has at other times permitted in his dramas the existence of a two-fold action, connected by a common idea, it was not necessary, in the instance before us, to sever the wasp-like body of Greene's story, nor could he have entirely concentrated the two actions ; he could but connect them indistinctly by a leading idea in both, although the manner in which he has outwardly connected them is a delicate and spirited piece of art, uniting, as he has done, tragedy and comedy, making the one elevate the other, and thus enriching the stage with a tragi-comic pastoral, a combination wholly unknown even to the good Polonius."

The curtain rises upon the Court of Leontes, King of Sicily, which his friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia, is preparing to leave, after having paid a visit of nine months' length. Failing to persuade him to stay longer, Leontes urges his queen to see whether her influence with their guest may not be more powerful than his own. Hermione, obeying, succeeds. Hereupon Leontes gives way to an outburst of passionate jealousy during which he communicates to his old servant, Camillo, his certain assurance of his wife's disloyalty, and after much importunity obtains from him a promise to poison Polixenes. The promise is, however, given merely in order that time may be gained to facilitate the escape of Polixenes, in company with whom Camillo determines to flee from his master's wrath. Foiled in this point, Leontes can only wreak his vengeance upon his wife, whom he consigns to prison, pending her trial for adultery and conspiracy. Meanwhile ambassadors are dispatched to Delphos to i 4 IN TROD UCTION.

procure the response of the Oracle as to Hermione's guilt or innocence. On their return, the trial proceeds, Hermione defends herself with a noble eloquence, and the response, being read out, declares her entire innocence, brands Leontes as a tyrant, and foretells the consequences of his -cruelty. But not even this is able to shake Leontes' confidence in his own penetration. Or, if he is at all shaken, the vindictive feelings he has been hugging to his heart will not allow him to confess his error : —

" There is no truth at all i 1 the oracle ; The sessions shall proceed ; this is mere falsehood,"

is his answer to the rejoicings of the lords. The words are scarce spoken when news is brought of Mamillius' sudden death. Leontes quails before this evident token of heaven's wrath ; and his tenderness towards Hermione returns as she goes off into a swoon. But a greater blow is to follow. In a few minutes Paulina, who had accompanied Hermione when borne out of the court of justice, re-enters with the news of her death, and heaps the bitterst reproaches upon the now deeply-penitent King. The queen, of course, had not really died ; but the moment had come for putting into execution the stratagem, which we may suppose to have been already planned, whereby she is to be concealed from the king's knowledge until such time as his repentance and expiation should seem to be adequate to the enormity of his crime. The act closes with a scene in which Antigonus, with the infant Perdita, lands on the coast of Bohemia, he, on condition of her life being spared, having consented to the king's terms

" That thou bear it To some remote and desert place quite out Of our dominions, and that there thou leave it, Without more mercy, to it own protection And favor of the climate. 1 ' Antigonus' literal discharge of the king's command has hardly beep *"" — wormed when he is pursued and torn to pieces uy a bear. His death is followed by the entrance of a shepherd who discovers Perdita, and carries her home to his cottage to be brought up as his own child.

We have now gone far enough in the story to take a retrospect of Hermione's bearing as seen in the matter which caused Leontes' outburst of jealousy, and her subsequent bearing when accused of, and brought to trial for, an offense of which she knew herself so clear. In reality, and to any one not predisposed, whether by temperament or by imagined evidence, to suspicions wholly unjust, her behavior towards Polixenes is nothing more than that of a pure-minded woman, who, enjoying to the full the friendship of a highsouled and altogether admirable man, is also persuaded that the greater her kindness to her guest, the better will she please a husband between whom and herself there had been mutual love and trust throughout a long course of years. Conscious of her complete loyalty, she is less afraid to be outspoken in her intercourse with one of the opposite sex than would have been the case were there any coquetry in her nature. Hence her playful persistency in the friendly passage at arms with Polixenes, hence the undisguised marks of intimacy shown towards him when, he having yielded to her persuasion, they converse together in Leontes' presence, and are seen by him as they retire to the garden.

It should, I think, be here noted, inregard to the courtesies which pass between them, that in Shakespeare's day, — and of course the manners here portrayed are those of that day, — the fashions in vogue admitted in some respects of a more demonstrative familiarity of outward behavior than would accord with the reserved decorum of modern life. This we must bear in mind when considering Leontes' comments on the behavior of Hermione and Polixenes ; for, omitting those instances which had their existence in Leontes' imagination only, the familiarities which they make no attempt to conceal, and which he so painfully misconstrues, are such as under the social code of the present day would be rightly taken to mean something more than mere friendship. So unconscious, however, is Hermione of anything like immodesty, that up to the moment when she tells Leontes that he will find them together in the garden, neither she nor Polixenes is in the least aware that their behavior had given rise to the faintest suspicion in his

IN TROD UCTIOiV. 1 7

mind. It is therefore with something more than surprise, with an absolute incredulity, that she receives the first manifestation of her husband's jealousy. "What is this? Sport?" she says in answer to his words ,

" Give me the boy : I 'm glad you did not nurse him : Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you Have too much blood in him.' 1

Leontes then proceeds to speak without any ambiguity of charge, telling her that she is with child by Polixenes. Even this plain accusation is treated as something that cannot be really, seriously, maintained by him : it would be enough, she says, for her to deny the imputation, and he would believe her, whatever his inclination to doubt. Further scorn heaped upon her only provokes the calmly indignant reply that Leontes does " but mistake." And when at last, pouring out all his abundance of vituperation, he orders her to prison, her theme is the grief that he will feel when he comes to a just knowledge of the wrong he has done her, and the patience that it behoves her to show under circumstances so untoward that she can only believe " There 's some ill planet reigns," some supernatural influence which has distraught her once loving and tender husband. Hurried off to prison, she bears herself with that dignity which under all changes of fortune is so peculiarly characteristic of her, though her grief is at the same time so terrible as to cause her to be delivered of a child " something before her time." Then, when still scarcely in a condition to go about, even if surrounded with all the comforts and attentions to which she had been used, she is summoned before a court of justice to be tried for her life ' ' 'fore who please to come and hear," and to be treated by her husband in terms. of shameless brutality. In answer to her arraignment, though well aware that denial of her guilt is not likely to avail her much, she touch - ingly asserts her continence and chastity during her past life, appealing to the divine powers in support of her asseveration, and even to that husband from whose vindictive unreason she is suffering so keenly. Life and honor are at stake with her ; for the former she cares nothing, now that her husband's love has forsaken her ; for the latter, more especially that her children must be partakers in the result of the trial, she will fight with such weapons as are in her hands. She asks, therefore, whether before Polixenes' visit she had ever been guilty of aught that should invite suspicion ; she points out that to him she had shown only such love as became a lady like herself, only such love as Leontes himself had enjoined her to show ; she . denies all knowledge of any conspiracy between Polixenes and Camillo ; she bewails the loss of her children, her boy from whose presence she is ' ' barr'd like one infectious," her new-born girl, from her breast " hal'd out to murder ; " she refers to the indignities to which she has been subjected ; and closes her defense by reiterating her indifference to life while yet so careful of her honor, and by invoking the oracle to protect her against condemnation upon mere surmise, against a judgment which shall be " rigor and not law."

The jealousy of Leontes has been contrasted with that of Othello ; and the points are many in which the character of the passion exhibited differs radically in the two men. In the case of Othello, the first suspicions are prompted by another, and fortified with a fiendish ingenuity of suggestion and circumstantial evidence sufficient to convince almost any husband, more especially a husband so diffident as was Othello of his power to please a woman. In the case of Leontes, the suspicious circumstances are wholly of his own creation; and the only person (Camillo) whom he takes into his confidence when he first openly gives way to his passion, uses every possible argument to convince him that he is the subject of a thoroughly baseless and unworthy delusion. Secondly, the jealousy of Othello is pathetic, tender, as far as possible impersonal, and carrying with it " confusion and despair at the loss of what had been to him the fairest thing on earth " (Dowden). The jealousy of Leontes is hard, vindictive, eminently selfish, and unaccompanied by any reluctance as to the course he is about to pursue.

There are other circumstances in which this contrast might be developed ; and it will, I think, be worth while to notice at some length one point which does not seem to have received from the critics such investigation as it deserves. I refer to the birth and growth of the passion in Leontes' mind. By general consent that passion appears to be regarded as something sudden, almost instantaneous, — the outcome of a single incident. Thus Gervinus remarks, " The idea of his wife's faithlessness arises in Leontes from the quick result of her entreaty to PoHxenes to prolong his stay a little. . . . This actually is the whole ground for Leontes' jealousy." According to Dowden, " Hermione is suspected of a sudden, and shameless dishonor." . . . Hudson, who discusses the point more at length, writes, " In the delineation of Leontes there is an abruptness of change which strikes us, at first view, as not a little a-clash with nature, . . . his jealousy shoots in comet-like, as something unprovided for in the general ordering of his character, which causes this feature to appear as if it were suggested rather by the exigencies of the stage than by the natural workings of human passion. And herein the poet seems at variance with himself ; his usual method being to unfold a passion in its rise and progress, so that we go along with it freely from its origin to its consumma. tion. And certainly there is no accounting for Leontes' conduct, but by supposing a predisposition to jealousy in him, which, however, has been hitherto kept latent by his wife's clear, firm, serene discreetness, but which breaks out into sudden and frightful activity as soon as she, under a special pressure of motives, slightly over-acts the confidence of friendship." However reluctantly, this critic seems to accept the idea that Leontes' jealousy was a sudden and almost unaccountable birth. Such suddenness, if established, of course enhances the madness of the consequent action. But is it established ? I venture to doubt this. In the novel, at all events, Leontes' doubts are gradual and of considerable duration; there was no suddenness of jealousy on the king's part. Has Shakespeare in Leontes' jealousy given us a picture of what is unnatural, almost monstrous? In the first place, I think that his familiarity with the novel may perhaps have unconsciously led him to treat that which was so well known to himself as if it were equally well known to those for whom he was writing ; and, the interest of the story beginning at the moment when Leontes' jealousy first openly manifests itself, he may not have thought it necessary to show in any detailed manner what the stages of that jealousy had been. He could not have failed to note the minuteness of description with which Greene records the progress of the passion in Leontes' mind ; nor are we in this matter without echoes in the play of the language of the novel. For instance, when Leontes says,

" I 'm angling now, Though you perceive me not how I give line,"

we have but a dramatic version of the narrative, ' ' Hee began to watch them more narrowely to see if he coulde gette any true or certaine proofe to confirme his doubtfull suspition " ; just as Camillo's words of advice, after promising to poison Polixenes,

" Go then ; and with a countenance as clear As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia,"

and Leontes' answer, I

i

" I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis'd me,"

are but the equivalent of another sentence in Greene, " Whereupon, desirous to revenge so great an injury, he thought best to dissemble the grudge with a faire and friendly countenance, and so under the shape of a friend to shew him the kicke of a foe" ; while Hermione's remark of surprise,

1 ' You look As if you held a brow of much distraction,"

is paralleled by the " lowring countenance " and "unaccustomed frowns" of the novel. If, as Hudson apologetically remarks, " Shakespeare had a course of action marked out for him in the tale," we may a priori suppose that he would be likely to follow it so far as it accorded with nature ; and, in a matter of this kind, however it might be in others, he could have nothing to gain by increasing the improbabilities of the plot. But, further, I hold that in the play itself we have plain indications that the growth of Leontes' passion had been a gradual one. These indications are, no doubt, retrospective, but none the less clear for that. Consider, first, Leontes' speech to Camillo in the second scene of the first act : —

" To bide upon 't, thou art not honest ; or, If thou inclin'st that way, thou art a coward, Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining From course requirM ; or else thou must be counted A servant grafted in my serious trust And therein negligent ; or else a fool That seest a game played home, the rich stake drawn, And tafcst it all for jest."

Surely, this is the language not of a man who has on a sudden discovered or doubted his wife's loyalty, bat of one who has long doubted, and who, for that reason, cannot understand that what has seemed so full of suspicion to him, should not have been equally suspicious to others also. His next speech is even more decisively contemptuous of those who have been blind to things staring himself so fully in the face : —

"Ha 1 not you seen, Camillo,— But that's past doubt, you have, or your eye-gla Is thicker than a cuckold 's horn, — or heard* For, to a vision so apparent, rumor Cannot be mute, — or thought, — for cogitation Resides not in that matt that does not think, — My wife is slippery ? If thou wilt confess, Or else be impudently negative, To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought, then say My wife 's a hobby-horse, deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts to Before her troth-plight :"

that is, in plain language, you must have constantly seen, as I have, their questionable familiarities ; you must have constantly heard that talked about which was so evident to everybody in the court ; you must have constantly ruminated over a subject which cannot but have entered into the mind of any one capable of thinking at all. And when Camillo still upholds the honor of his mistress and rebukes the unjustifiable suspicions to which he has been made to listen, Leontes bursts forth with a narration of overt acts which from time to time have come before his eyes : —

" Is whispering nothing- ?

Is leaning cheek to cheek ? is meeting noses ? Kissing with inside lip ? stopping the career Of laughing with a sigh ? — a note infallible Of breaking honesty— horsing foot on foot ? Skulking in corners ? wishing clocks more swift ? Hours, minutes ? noon, midnight ? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, That would unseen be wicked ? is this nothing ? Why, then the world and all that 's in 't is nothing ; The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia nothing ; My wife is nothing ; nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing. 1 '

Some of the familiarities here mentioned are such as Leontes observed immediately after Polixenes had yielded to Hermione's entreaty to stay ; but there are others of them that cannot but refer to an earlier experience, and to passages in their intercourse of considerable duration. In fact, Leontes' words indicate more than anything else a long-continued watchfulness

1 that makes him alert to misconstrue any courtesies however innocent, and alert also to imagine familiarities which he could not have seen. Lastly, when Camillo refuses to poison Polixenes because he cannot be brought to "believe this crack to be in" his " dread mistress," Leontes fiercely turns upon him with the question whether any man, and he himself of all men, would be fool enough to cherish a maddening conviction unless he had good and sufficient proof of that which caused him such torture : —

" Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled, T" 1 appoint myself in this vexation, sully The purity and whiteness of my sheets, — Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps, — Give scandal to the blood o 1 the prince my son, Who I do think is mine and love as mine, Without ripe moving to V ? Would I do this ? Could man so blench .*"

Are these the arguments of one who on the spur of the moment would jump to the condemnation of his wife, more especially such a wife as Hermione, and a wife for all these years acknowledged by him to be what we know Hermione was ? Do they not rather indicate a long brooding of jealousy, a thorough consciousness of the terrible step he is taking, a conviction that the evidence which had been accumulating for months is by this latest proof of Hermione's influence over Polixenes now made irrefragable ? It is no answer to say that his jealousy was baseless and unreasoning. The demon having once been allowed entrance into his bosom, constant communing with it would only confirm and exaggerate suspicions which, if sudden, would probably have yielded to Camillo's arguments. When dwelt upon,

" Trifles light as air Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong As proofs of holy writ ;"

and in the blind perversity and obstinate tenacity of belief shown by one hitherto so free from anything like distrust, it seems to me that we must rather recognize his inability any longer to control the fierce current which had for some time past been threatening to carry him away.

We now come to the second part of the story which occupies the last two acts. Sixteen years having elapsed since the trial of Hermione, Time, with a passing reference to what has happened in the interval, comes forward as Chorus to apologize for the demand made upon the spectators' imagination, and to explain the change of scene, which is now laid in Bohemia. Here we find Camillo imploring Polixenes to allow him to return to Sicily, there to end his days, and Polixenes as earnestly pressing Camillo not to leave him. Among other arguments which the king uses is his anxiety about his son, Florizel, whom he suspects of having fallen in love with a certain shepherd's daughter. Camillo yields to the king's entreaties ; and, with the intervention of a scene which introduces that delightful rogue, Autolycus, we come to the sheep-shearing festival at which Perdita, as the shepherd's putative daughter, presides. During the progress of this festival , Florizel in the presence of Polixenes and Camillo, who have come there disguised, is on the point of formally betrothing himself to Perdita, when the king, unmasking, puts an end to the project. Upon the king's subsequent departure, Florizel and Perdita determine to elope together. Camillo, desirous on every account, and more especially as a means of procuring his own return home, to effect a reconciliation between the two kings, suggests to the runaways that they should proceed to Sicily, Florizel making pretense of a mission of peace from Polixenes. So soon as they shall have sailed, he promises to himself to betray their intentions to the king, and so induce him to follow them. Florizel and Perdita take Camillo's advice, and the fifth act opens upon their arrival at Leontes' court, where they are received with every mark of kindness. Polixenes and Camillo are, however, in quick pursuit and reach Sicily close at their heels. By means of the clothes and ornaments which the old shepherd had preserved, Perdita's real birth is discovered and Leontes' consent is given to her marriage with Florizel. But before the wedding takes place the two kings, with Perdita, Florizel, Camillo, etc., pay a visit to the chapel in which Paulina wishes to show them the statute of Hermione, executed, as she alleges, by that cunning sculptor, Julio

Romano. The seeming statute proves to be Hermione herself, who for sixteen years has been attended upon by Paulina, and who, now that the oracle has been fulfilled and Leontes' sin expiated by his long penitence, restores herself to her husband's arms amid general reconciliation and rejoicing.

In regard to Perdita, having nothing new to put forward, I leave the student to Mrs. Jameson's admirable sketch of her character ; referring him to the same critic also for an explanation of the one circumstance in the latter half of the play which has given rise to some discussion, viz., Hermione's long-enduring and self-imposed banishment from her husband. It may however be of some use to my readers if, in reference to the festival which occupies so prominent a part in the delineation of Perdita's character, some account is given of those held i ' especial honor in by-gone days.

Apart from festivals of a purely religious origin, such as Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, Hallowmas, All Souls Day, etc. , etc. , and festivals partly religious, partly patriotic, such as St. George's Day, St. Patrick's Day, St. David's Day, St. Crispin's Day, etc., held in honor of the eponymous hero or saint, there were others, some of which have now fallen into much disuse, that celebrated a particular season of the year. Of these the more important were May- Day, Sheep-Shearing Time, Midsummer, Harvest- Home, and to all of these Shakespeare has frequent allusion. May-Day and Harvest- Home still retain much of their popularity, and are celebrated probably in every village of any size, though the encroachment of the town upon the country has shorn even these of some of their enthusiasm. Sheep-Shearing Time com mences as soon as the warm weather is so far settlec that the sheep may, without danger, lay aside their winter clothing ; the following tokens being laid down by Dyer in his " Fleece " (book i.) to mark out the proper time : —

" If verdant elder spreads Her silver flowers ; if humble daisies yield To yellow crowfoot and luxuriant grass, Gay shearing time approaches.' 1

Our ancestors, who took advantage of every natural holiday, to keep it long and gladly, celebrated the time of sheep-shearing by a feast exclusively rural.

In our play, the festivities begin with Perdita's presentation of emblematical flowers to the elder of her guests, and the season is denned by her in the words —

" The year growing ancient, Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter ; 11

and again —