The Winter's Tale

Critical Essays

Maurice Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138864221
• eBook ISBN: 9781135023294
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A collection that includes a lengthy introduction describing historical trends in critical interpretations and theatrical performances of Shakespeare's play; 20 essays on the play, including two written especially for this volume (by Maurice Hunt and David Bergeron).

Criticism

1

The Characters of Shakespear's Plays The Winter's Tale

by William Hazlitt

We wonder that Mr. Pope should have entertained doubts of the genuineness of this play. He was, we suppose, shocked (as a certain critic suggests) at the Chorus, Time, leaping over sixteen years with his crutch between the third and fourth act, and at Antigonus's landing with the infant Perdita on the sea-coast of Bohemia. These slips or blemishes however do not prove it not to be Shakespear's; for he was as likely to fall into them as any body; but we do not know any body but himself who could produce the beauties. The stuff of which the tragic passion is composed, the romantic sweetness, the comic humour, are evidently his. Even the crabbed and tortuous style of the speeches of Leontes, reasoning on his own jealousy, beset with doubts and fears, and entangled more and more in the thorny labyrinth, bears every mark of Shakespear's peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of different thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance, and almost strangled in the birth. For instance: —

‘Ha’ not you seen, Camillo?
(But that's past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold's horn) or heard,
(For to a vision so apparent, rumour
Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation
Resides not within man 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.’—

Here Leontes is confounded with his own passion, and does not know which way to turn himself, to give words to the anguish, rage, and apprehension, which tug at his breast. It is only as he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter indignation: yet even here his passion staggers, and is as it were oppressed with its own intensity.

‘Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty!) horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? the 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's nothing,
My wife is nothing!’

The character of Hermione is as much distinguished by its saint-like resignation and patient forbearance, as that of Paulina is by her zealous and spirited remonstrances against the injustice done to the queen, and by her devoted attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione's restoration to her husband and her child, after her long separation from them, is as affecting in itself as it is striking in the representation. Camillo, and the old shepherd and his son, are subordinate but not uninteresting instruments in the development of the plot, and though last, not least, comes Autolycus, a very pleasant, thriving rogue; and (what is the best feather in the cap of all knavery) he escapes with impunity in the end.

The Winter's Tale is one of the best-acting of our author's plays. We remember seeing it with great pleasure many years ago. It was on the night that King took leave of the stage, when he and Mrs. Jordan played together in the after-piece of the Wedding-day. Nothing could go off with more éclat, with more spirit, and grandeur of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Hermione, and in the last scene acted the painted statue to the life—with true monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, in Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical phrensy; and Bannister, as Autolycus, roared as loud for pity as a sturdy beggar could do who felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was sound of limb and wind. We shall never see these parts so acted again; or if we did, it would be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer surprise us with their novelty. But true poetry, like nature, is always young; and we still read the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, as we welcome the return of spring, with the same feelings as ever.

‘Florizel. Thou dearest Perdita,
With these forc'd thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not
The mirth o’ the feast: or, I'll be thine, my fair,
Or not my father's: for I cannot be
Mine own, nor any thing to any, if
I be not thine. To this I am most constant,
Tho’ destiny say, No. Be merry, gentle;
Strangle such thoughts as these, with any thing
That you behold the while. Your guests are coming:
Lift up your countenance; as it were the day
Of celebration of that nuptial, which
We two have sworn shall come.
Perdita. O lady fortune,
Stand you auspicious!

Enter Shepherd, Clown, MOPSA, DORCAS, Servants; with POLIXENES and CAMILLO, disguised.

Florizel. See your guests approach.
Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,
And let's be red with mirth.
Shepherd. Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon
This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook;
Both dame and servant: welcom'd all, serv'd all;
Would sing her song, and dance her turn: now here
At upper end o’ the table, now i’ the middle:
On his shoulder, and his: her face o’ fire
With labour; and the thing she took to quench it
She would to each one sip. You are retir'd,
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid
These unknown friends to us welcome; for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes; and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o’ the feast. Come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,
As your good flock shall prosper.
Perdita. Sir, welcome! [to Polixenes and Camillo]
It is my father's will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o’ the day: you're welcome, sir!
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.—Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming, and savour, all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be unto you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
Polixenes. Shepherdess,
(A fair one are you) well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations, and streak'd gilly-flowers,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Perdita. For I have heard it said
There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes. Say, there be:
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art
Which you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scyon to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather: but
The art itself is nature.
Perdita. So it is.¹
Polixenes. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers,
And do not call them bastards.
Perdita. I'll not put
The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them;¹
No more than, were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say, ’twere well; and only therefore
Desire to breed by me.—Here's flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given
To men of middle age. You are very welcome.
Camillo. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
Perdita. Out, alas!
You'd be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through. Now my fairest friends,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring, that might
Become your time of day; and your's, and your's,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maiden-heads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty: violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The fleur-de-lis being one! O, these I lack
To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend
To strow him o'er and o'er.
Florizel. What, like a corse?
Perdita. No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if—not to be buried,
But quick, and in mine arms. Come take your flowers;
Methinks, I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
Florizel. What you do,
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so, give alms;
Pray, so; and for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that: move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
Perdita. O Doricles,
Your praises are too large; but that your youth
And the true blood, which peeps forth fairly through it,
Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd;
With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,
You woo'd me the false way.
Florizel. I think you have
As little skill to fear, as I have purpose
To put you to't. But come, our dance, I pray:
Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair,
That never mean to part.
Perdita. I'll swear for ’em.
Polixenes. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does, or seems,
But smacks of something greater than herself,
Too noble for this place.
Camillo. He tells her something
That makes her blood look out: good sooth she is
The queen of curds and cream.’

This delicious scene is interrupted by the father of the prince discovering himself to Florizel, and haughtily breaking off the intended match between his son and Perdita. When Polixenes goes out, Perdita says,

‘Even here undone:
I was not much afraid; for once or twice
I was about to speak; and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun that shines upon his court,
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on't alike. Wilt please you, sir, be gone? [To Florizel]
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care: this dream of mine,
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,
But milk my ewes and weep.’

As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out to be the daughter of Hermione, and a princess in disguise, both feelings of the pride of birth and the claims of nature are satisfied by the fortunate event of the story, and the fine romance of poetry is reconciled to the strictest court-etiquette.

Note

¹The lady, we here see, gives up the argument, but keeps her mind.

2

Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare
Notes on The Winter's Tale

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years’ voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example: —

‘Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before that recovery.’

The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello, which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well-known and well-defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello; —such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humor, and yet from the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who can not, and who are known not to be able to, understand what is said to them, —in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honor, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness.

Act i. sc. 1-2.

Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes’ obstinate refusal to Leontes to stay—

There is no tongue that moves; none, none i’ the world
So soon as yours, could win me;—

prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione;— which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:—

Yet, good deed, Leontes,
I love thee not a jar o’ the clock behind
What lady she her lord;—

accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.

At my request, he would not:—

The first working of the jealous fit;—

Too hot, too hot:—

The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards—

Paddling palms and pinching fingers;—

followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy.

Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech.

That thou betray'dst Polixenes, ‘twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,
And damnable ingrateful.—

Theobald reads ‘soul.’

I think the original word is Shakspere's. 1. My ear feels it to be Shaksperian; 2. The involved grammar is Shaksperian;—‘show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;’ 3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shaksperian. As to the grossness of the abuse—she calls ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• General Editor’s Introduction
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• The Critical Legacy
• Criticism
• 1. “The Winter's Tale,” from The Characters of Shakespear's Plays,
• 2. “Notes on The Winter's Tale,” from Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare,
• 3. “Preface to The Winter's Tale,” from More Prefaces to Shakespeare,
• 4. “The Winter's Tale,” from Shakespeare's Workmanship,
• 5. “The Meaning of The Winter's Tale,”
• 6. “Recognition in The Winter's Tale,”
• 7. “Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale,” from Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature,
• 8. “The Triumph of Time in The Winter's Tale,”
• 9. “The Winter's Tale,” from Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness,
• 10. “The Tragicomic Perspective of The Winter's Tale,”
• 11. “Time, Sexual Love, and the Uses of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale,”
• 12. “Our Carver's Excellence: The Winter's Tale,” from Shakespearean Romance,
• 13. “The Winter's Tale: The Triumph of Speech,”
• 14. “‘O my most sacred lady’: Female Metaphor in The Winter's Tale,”
• 15. “Verbal Reminiscence and the Two-part Structure of The Winter's Tale,”
• 16. “Poetry and Plot in The Winter's Tale,”
• 17. “From Matter to Magic: The Winter's Tale,” from Dream Works: Lovers and Families in Shakespeare's Plays,
• 18. “The Labor of The Winter's Tale,”
• 19. “The Apollo Mission in The Winter's Tale,”
• Theatre Reviews
• 20. The Times, 26 March 1802
• 21. The Times, 29 November 1811
• 22. The Times, 28 November 1845
• 23. The Times, 29 April 1856
• 24. The Times, 23 September 1912
• 25. The Times, 28 June 1951
• 26. From “Current Shakespearian Productions in England and France,” from Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 2, 1951,
• 27. From “Shakespeare in Britain,” from Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 20, 1969,
• 28. From “Interpretation or Experience? Shakespeare at Stratford,” from Shakespeare Survey, Volume 23, 1970,
• 29. “The Winter's Tale,” from Cahiers Élisabéthains, October 1976,
• 30. From “Shakespeare in Britain,” from Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 28, 1977,
• 31. From “‘The Shakespeare Plays’: Hamlet and the Five Plays of Season Three,” from Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 32, 1981,
• 32. From “Interpretations of Shakespearian Comedy, 1981,” from Shakespeare Survey, Volume 35, 1982,
• 33. “The Shakespeare Plays on TV, The Winter's Tale,” from Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, Vol. 6, 1982,
• 34. “The Making of a Romantic Lead,” from The Sunday Times, 4 May 1986,
• 35. “A Kindergarten Monarch,” from The Times Literary Supplement, 23 May 1986,
• 36. From “Shakespeare Performances in London, Manchester and Stratford-upon-Avon 1985-86,” from Shakespeare Survey, Volume 40, 1987,
• 37. From “Shakespeare's Late Plays at Stratford, Ontario,” from Shakespeare Survey, Volume 40, 1987,
• 38. From “Shakespeare Performances in England, 1987-8,” from Shakespeare Survey, Volume 42, 1989,
• List of Major Performances
• Index
• Shakespeare Criticism