Michael:

This is the second longest scene in the play, after the extraordinarily long Act 4. Here of course the whole tragic nature of the first three acts unfolds. What seems to me most prominent in the opening is Hermione’s playful wit. She teases Leontes, then Polixenes. And her pregnant state is the prominent visual element of the scene. Polixenes provides an image of carefree innocence in response to her question about the boyhood of the two men, even to the denial of any sense of original sin. Perhaps ominously, Hermione teases that marriage and sexuality must have ended that innocence, but it’s simply witty, with no idea that sexual experience could really be sinful in these happily married couples. And her pregnant state seems to underscore that understanding. We see Mamillius in the scene throughout, though he never speaks at this early point. How old is he? From what he says later, and the way Leontes speaks to him, I would say he’s about six or seven. But his presence seems initially to ratify the happily familial sense of things.

So what to make of Leontes’ sudden and unexpected jealousy and suspicions? This version of Othello doesn’t need an Iago; it’s his own entire fantasy. I take it that Shakespeare is portraying what we would call paranoid psychosis, totally unmotivated and impermeable to any reasonable argument. What’s perhaps darkest and most unforgivable here is the way Leontes involves Mamillius in his fantasy. His playfulness with the boy would be attractive if it weren’t for his intermixing of cuckold imagery. His memory of his likeness to Mamillius, and Polixenes’ response to it would have a certain charm if it weren’t for the beginning of this paranoid fantasy. It’s even allowed to taint the audience at ll. 190ff, as we imagine there are couples there: “And many a man there is, even at this present, Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, That little thinks . . .” His language grows sexually explicit in what follows. Mamillius’ “I am like you, they say” seems desperate, even though he can’t know what he’s responding to. Leontes’ dismissal of Mamillius may be a relief at this point.

If we needed it — probably not — Camillo’s dumbfounded shock would ratify our sense that something terrible has happened. Leontes’ repeated “nothing” at 292-96 seems reminiscent of the use of the word in Lear. His seeming acquiescence to Leontes necessitates his soliloquy when Leontes exits. Polixenes’s report of Leontes changed attitude of course confirms what we’ve seen. His reference to Judas at 419f., perhaps like the earlier denial of original sin, may make us wonder what time period obtains in the play. Later we have the emissaries from the oracle and the invocation of Apollo that place it all in classical time.

I find myself wondering how the rulers of Sicily and Bohemia (even with a seacoast!) happened to share a boyhood association and friendship. But I suppose this is something we simply must accept. No explanation is ever given.

The play moves very quickly through this whole arc of idealized friendship and apparent marital contentment to tragic jealousy and potential murder.

Dusty:

1.1: yes, it seems like an idealized account of an old friendship. But I think the language alerts us that something bad is coming. It turns out ironically that there will soon be a “great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.” When Camillo says “The heavens continue their loves!” do we sense that something powerful might be needed to enable their loves to continue? I’m also struck by the negatives:  “affection cannot choose but branch now” (23-24), “I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it” (33), “If the king had no son . . .” (44).

1.2: Should a director  try to provide clues in the way Leontes delivers his opening lines (before the long exchange between Polixenes and Hermione)– he speaks one-liners while Polixenes goes on and on —  that he is already suspicious?

Hermione is interestingly silent until Leontes addresses her, and then she is quite loquacious. Maybe that’s designed to make clear to the audience that since she doesn’t speak, even playfully, until she is invited to, she possesses the appropriate conventional feminine virtues (subordination, modesty, etc.)

Presumably Leones is fuming and twitching while his wife and best friend engage in witty banter. But he doesn’t unequivocally reveal his paranoia until his aside at 108. Now he gets some long speeches with Mamilius, and others on the stage can tell that he is “unsettled.” His speeches suggest it, with their stops and starts, sudden switches from one addressee and another, and parenthetical self-interruptions.

As you note, it’s a very long scene — 465 lines. Is there a longer one in all of Shakespeare? But most of it involves dialogue between two people, though there are others on the stage. Maybe it’s so long because lots of business needs to get done, including the exchange between Camillo and Leontes — which feels like a separate scene — and then the exchange between Camillo and Polixenes to plot their departure. Again, it almost feels like a separate scene.

Dusty:

2.1 Is there another scene in Shakespeare where young parents are shown playing with their young son? (My editor thinks Leontes is about 30 and Mamilius about 7). It’s charming, and Mamilius behaves like a precocious and naive child rather than a proto-adult. Shakespeare is perhaps fleshing out the idea that young children “make old hearts fresh.” He also plants his allusion to a “sad tale . . . for winter.” We are presumably meant to contrast Hermione’s “mock-annoyance” (as my editor calls it) with Mamilius and Leontes’ words, which all seem to have an edge to them.

Leontes’ speeches now reveal more clearly his sputtering paranoia. As you say, there’s no Iago: it all comes out his own head. While he is inflamed, Hermione is patient, resolute, calm. Maybe that enrages him more.

The scene has a  surprising end with Antigonus’ aside: he seems to think Leontes is making a fool of himself, and that it will all end in laughter, when the truth comes out. Alas, not so.

2.2  Interesting that in this scene Shakespeare does not “cut to” Hermione. Instead, we get an exchange between two of her women. Shakespeare seems to want to keep her off the stage until the big scene in Act III.2, when she gets some major speeches.

Michael:

In 2.2 I like Paulina’s defense to the jailer that the baby doesn’t need a warrant to be sprung from prison because she had been prisoner in the womb, but is now freed by “law and process” of Nature and not subject to any guilt in her parents. The jailer buys this, which puts him on the right side of things.

Paulina dominates act 2.3, she and the silent bundle that is the baby girl. At the beginning Leontes confesses that, Macbeth-like, he cannot sleep, which he thinks is “mere weakness.” He believes that this would be cured by Hermione’s death. And immediately the servant brings in news of Mamillius’ sickness, which he understands, certainly misunderstands, as the boy’s response to his mother’s accused adultery. The strong suggestion is that the unnaturalness of the situation has spread through the characters, Leontes’ insomnia, the boy’s sickness, and the rejection of the baby girl. When Paulina pushes her way in with the baby, she seems to hope to restore natural equilibrium, to provide sleep with “words as medicinal as true.” Leontes seems to know something of Paulina; though he had told Antigonus not to let her near him, he says he knew she would come. He mocks Antigonus’ inability to rule his wife, but this only highlights Paulina’s independence. And her insistence on “good queen” seems almost a physical pushing back against Leontes. And her threat to claw the eyes of any who would restrain her certainly underscores this. I wonder if she puts the baby down before she says this, then speaks to Leontes commending the baby. This would free her for physical resistance.

I see the staging as having her set the baby at center stage, then challenging Antigonus against touching the baby after Leontes has called it a bastard. Paulina says “thy hands,” singular, which clearly means Antigonus, but it must include the others on the stage, and accords the bundle a certain power. Only she approaches or touches the baby, when she uses the conceit of printing to liken the baby to her father. She invokes “good goddess Nature” that the baby will not fall into the wonderful absurdity of suspecting her children as not her husband’s. Leontes’ insults and threats to her have no affect at all, and the stage seems to divide on gendered lines as she evades the violence of the courtiers and Antigonus, who try to restrain her and force her out. Leontes threatens to dash the baby’s brains out (like Lady Macbeth’s insistence to Macbeth of her willingness to dash out the brains of the baby she remembers suckling). But the bundle seems to retain the power Paulina had assigned it, and I take it that no one can touch the baby until Leontes agrees to allow her to be exposed to the elements. At that point Antigonus can pick up the bundle and pray for the romance-like preservation by wild animals.

Then at the close of the scene we hear about Cleomenes and Dion who have returned from Delos (though Delphi in the text), which we remember from our visit, though apparently Shakespeare could not, as sacred to Apollo. Surprisingly, Leontes promises “a just and open trial” of Hernione. Odd after all the physical threats of violence against her.

The short following scene links the idea of a natural benevolence with the rites of the oracle, ear-deafening as the are. Cleomenes and Dion seem to be solidly on Hermione’s side.

Next the big scene of the trial and opening of the oracle, and the seeming conclusion of the tragedy.

Dusty:

In 2.3 Leontes appears to relent a little when he agrees at 160 to let the child live, responding apparently to the sight of kneeling supplicants. Is this a signal that he is not fundamentally murderous, or just that he is “a feather for each wind that blows”? Or does he begin to realize that he is doing too far? It’s odd that at 204 he declares that there will be a “just and open trial,” since he had already prejudged her to be guilty. But then he had also already sent for word from the oracle, presumably assuming that it would confirm his suspicion.

Interesting that at 186 Antigonus imagines that “wolves and bears” might raise an abandoned baby — and we will soon seen a bear.

As for Delphos/Delphi, my edition has a note indicating that Delos, an “isle” sacred to Apollo, was commonly known as Delphos. Did our guide tell us about consulting any oracle on Delos?

Dusty:

3.1. seems to convey no important information, except (as you note) to indicate that Cleomenes and Dion hope the oracle will favor Hermione. I guess they heard the “ear-deaf’ning voice” of the Oracle as it prepared to deliver its message, but did not hear the message itself, which was apparently uttered more quietly, and written down by the priests. But  it appears to be an important scene, perhaps designed to increase the importance of the oracle, and perhaps to contrast   the “solemn and unearthly” ceremony of consulting the oracle with the earthly trial scene at Leontes’ court.

3.2 We now see that Leontes, even though he has already pre-judged Hermione to be guilty and has sentenced her to death (91), wants to be “clear’d” himself of being a tyrant, and so calls for an open trial.  Paulina had hinted back in 2.3 that his action “savours/ Of tyranny.” (It’s almost as if he is on trial — and will soon be found guilty, for the trial proves that he is indeed a tyrant.)

This is Hermione’s big scene, and she dominates it as Paulina had dominated the previous big scene. Although Hermione was modestly quiet at the beginning of the play, it turns out that she knows how to talk. Does any female character in Shakespeare so dominate a scene? (Maybe Portia, maybe Cleopatra.)

Although it is Leontes who ordered that the oracle be consulted, it is Hermione who appeals to the oracle (115). Leontes, when he doesn’t get the message he wanted, quickly rejects it (141).

There are two puzzling moments in this scene, the first when Leontes learns that part of the oracle has apparently been proven true –“the king shall live without an heir” — he is instantly convinced that he was wrong (147). How would you play this sudden reversal? The second  puzzle for me is Paulina’s declaration that Hermione is dead. Does she think she is telling the truth? Or is she determined to punish Leontes by making him think her dead? (There is nothing in the oracle about Hermione either dying or succeeding Leontes.)

News of her death, coming soon after that of Mamilius, makes us think we are in the last scene of a tragedy, where the bodies pile up, and there is nothing left to do but to mourn the dead.

And then to the coast of Bohemia and a transitional scene. There are more deaths — the bear dining on Antigonus, and the entire ship going down with all hands lost — but it’s a comic scene, with comically low characters, so we aren’t affected by the extended (and gruesomely particular) report of the deaths. I have always assumed that “thou met’st with things dying, I with things new-born” signals the key turn in the play from death to life, tragedy to romance, etc., but the editor of my edition (J. H. P. Pafford) regards it as a “simple statement of fact in language completely fitting to the occasion and to the speaker,” and part of a back-and-forth dialogue between old shepherd and young clown.

Michael:

I don’t recall hearing about an oracle on Delos; I do remember our guide’s insightful etymology of obscene, as that which takes place behind the skena, bloodshed, murder, blinding, which Greek drama did not want us to look upon. And her marvelous name, I recall, was Amaryllis.

Leontes’ trial of Hermione is surely a show-trial, since as you note he has already judged and condemned her. He merely wants to clear himself. But yes, I agree Hermione dominates the scene as almost no other female character in Shakespeare does. She follows a logic that entirely countermands Leontes: what can I say in my defense since it’s my integrity that’s the entire issue in this; it was at your command that I accorded Polixenes an honorable love; spare threats of death since my life is such that I seek death. He can have no response.

Leontes sudden reversal must come from a sort of shock treatment; it would surely ask a good deal of the actor. I don’t know if Paulina at this point believes Hermione is dead. Perhaps she sees her swooning and a catatonic state as a death or leading to death? I take it she does not immediately formulate the idea of keeping her sequestered (and bringing sandwiches to her at the bottom of the garden, as I once heard it formulated). Only death would seem to respond to the death of Mamillius, the separation from her baby, and Leontes’ accusation. The audience must believe she has died, then at the end reverse that belief; much to ask of course, but somehow accomplished in a successful staging.

And Paulina is the strange key to both. Her seeming curse on Leontes, “A thousand knees, ten thousand years together, naked, fasting . . . could not move the gods .  .  .” seems a proper response to a seemingly infinite loss. Of course she takes it back, but it seems fitting at this point, and Leontes appears to accept it.

I take it that Antigonus dies because he believes Leontes’ accusation, failing to maintain faith in Hermione. I’ve also fastened on that sentence of the old shepherd, “Thou met’st with things dying, I with things new born,” as the hinge or pivot point of the play; from the tragedy of the last scene to the strangely comic descriptions of what are, after all, the tragic events of this one, the shipwreck (“flapdragoned” for heaven’s sake) and the death of Antigonus (“the bear half dined on the gentleman”). The famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear,” must be the greatest stagecraft challenge of the play. Or maybe it’s equal to the statue scene. Was the Globe company able to hire a bear from the nearby bear-bating operation? Or did they have a bear costume that needed to be used? I’ve seen it done with a monstrous pseudo-bear, and it seemed rather foolish and unpersuasive. But should it be frightening? or oddly comic?  Actually the comic descriptions come after the bear stage direction, when the old shepherd comes in grumbling about the “boiled brains” of young men hunting, who are also apt to engage in the “stair work” that he assumes is behind the very pretty “child” he has just found. So Antigonus’ bear moment must be the actual pivot point, when we finish with tragedy and launch into what will be comedy. So I take it the bear must be frightening, however it’s done. Probably a real bear, even secured somehow, would be seen as dangerous by the groundlings, and even if it were a bear costume, there would be some moments before the theater-goers would realize that. The clown describes Antigonus’ offstage cries and the roar of the bear, so that must have been part of it. So I take it that that small textual blank space between the stage direction and [Enter] Shepherd was actually filled with some impressive stage business, the bear, screams, and roaring. A pause, then the comic turn to describe tragic events?

This looks like the real break in the play, just before Time the chorus. Acts 4 and 5 are in fact the second half of the play, and 4.4 is about 850 lines long, filled with all sorts of business and only tangentially advancing the plot.

I think Time is the first to name Perdita, only called “that which is lost” by the oracle. Time takes the plot in hand and gives some anticipation of the “romance” character of what will come.

The exchange between Polixenes and Camillo is oddly reminiscent of the dialogue of Polixenes and Leontes at the beginning, discussion of wanting to leave and being talked out of it. Now the anticipation of Florizel and his haunting of the house of the shepherd who has grown unaccountably rich with a daughter “of most rare note” become the focus.

Autolycus in 4.3 is a figure of fun who will come back at the end of the act for a small role in the plot. But here he seems simply to sing and provide comic interest. Could this have been a kind of comic version of a Good Samaritan play? I don’t know of any Good Samaritan plays, so perhaps not in any very specific way. But it is amusing and seems to have almost nothing to do with advancing the plot. We do hear of a puppet show of the Prodigal Son (which was a play in Florence). But we are taken into early spring and the season of sheep-shearing. We also seem to be in the world of cony-catching pamphlets and vagabond slang. This may be Bohemia, but it’s also the contemporary world the audience knows. Autolycus’ self-description at 95-101 seems to encompass a world of popular lore.

Dusty:

I don’t remember either about an oracle on Delos. But my Arden editor is pretty sure there was one. Note that there is a reference to an “isle” in the text.

Maybe the actor playing Leontes needs to stop, stunned, and say nothing for a few seconds, so that the audience can accept his repentance. I think you are right that the audience has to believe that Hermione has indeed died.

Your directorial notes about the bear sound playable to me. Maybe the range of the play — from tragedy to comedy — is such that you can play it either way. I don’t think the audience worries very much, or very long, about the fate of Antigonus.

Dusty:

4.1 completes the transition to a new world: from Sicily to Bohemia, from court to country, from tragedy to pastoral-comical, and as you suggest from distant stagey places to a contemporary English sheep-shearing festival. By the end of Act III I think we are prepared for theatrical tricks, and are not surprised with a meta-theatrical Time making an appearance as Chorus. He too has a “tale” (14) to tell, not a winter’s tale but a tale of late spring (when sheep-shearing takes place).

4.2. switches to prose (after the rhymed couplets of the Chorus), and as you say seems to reprise the beginning of the play, with Camillo now seeking to return to his home country, but also sets up the next phase, in which a suspicious king will act upon his fears.

I would direct Autolycus to enter in 4.3 rather as Time did in 4.1., speaking directly to the audience, “breaking the frame.” This is further confirmation that we are in a different place, with different theatrical “rules.” Maybe he also serves to prepare us for the leisurely comic revue style of 4.4, with episodes of singing, dialogue, dancing, episodic bits of plotting. The pickpocketing seems pretty broad comic material, especially after the high-pressure drama of Acts 1, 2, and 3.1-2. On the page it seems to me to drag a little. On the stage it would be livelier.

4.4 Can the audience sustain its attention over 843 lines? Maybe yes, because the scene seems to break up into sub-scenes: i) Florizel and Perdita, ii) the famous flower dialogue, iii) a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses, iv) Autolycus again, v) the dance of the satyrs, vi) the intervention . . .

Since the scene is so long, I’ll comment only up to the exit of Polixenes at l. 442.

1. i) Florizel and Perdita. They both know their classical mythology pretty well, and help us to imagine that we are viewing both a sheep-shearing festival and a “meeting of the petty gods.” (Where did Perdita learn about Proserpina, Dis, and Cytherea, or for that matter about the properties of flowers?) A traditional comic situation is quickly established: a traditional father stands as an obstacle to the marriage of young lovers — and they have already plighted their troth. (The other father is all in favor of the match.)
2. ii) Perdita modestly hangs back, as did Hermione in 1.2. The Shepherd urges her to step forward and be “the hostess of the meeting” just as Leontes urged Hermione to persuade Polixenes to stay. She then distributes flowers, though the occasion is quite different from the one in Hamlet, where a distracted Ophelia hands out emblematic flowers. She codes the disguised Polixenes and Camillo with “flowers of winter” — Rosemary and rue bloom in the spring but “keep/ Seeming and savour all the winter long” which means they are both flowers of spring and flowers of winter.

It’s not clear to me why Perdita’s lines about carnations and gillyvors make an appropriate response to Polixenes’ lines about the suitable “flowers of winter.” Is she somehow correcting his “flowers of winter” by saying that there are flowers that bloom quite late in the year (chrysanthemums bloom in Williamstown in the fall), but she won’t have any of them in her chaste garden, and so has to give rosemary and rue?

This leads in to the famous lines about cross-breeding, the “art/That nature makes.” Ironic of course, because Polixenes is about to try to prevent any cross-breeding between his son and a shepherdess. My editor points out that the idea was not a Shakespearean invention but a Renaissance commonplace, as Perdita concedes when she says she has “heard it said.”

Perdita continues distributing flowers in a public scene, but when she hands them to Florizel the ensuing dialogue (130-55) becomes intimate, as the lovers seem to re-pledge their faith. At this point Polixenes becomes suspicious, reprising the moment in 1.2 when Leontes becomes suspicious of Hermione. Maybe a director would want to instruct the actor to act  suspicious from the beginning of the scene.

iii) The dance makes me think of French opera, where the audience was apparently expecting a display of dance and was quite happy to have the action stop.

1. iv) More Autolycus, entertaining if he is a good singer-dancer-comic actor. The tone of the scene becomes more ribald, which you would think might embarrass modest Perdita.
2. v) Another dance. Satyrs will presumably be raunchier than shepherds.
3. vi) Polixenes now thinks things are “too far gone” and prepares to intervene in order to “part” the lovers. So there must be an edge in his voice as he urges Florizel to profess himself. Maybe a tricky task for the actor, since Florizel doesn’t yet catch on. Indeed, Florizel publicly declares his love and invites Polixenes to be a witness. (I think in Elizabethan law this would constitute a legal marriage.) Polixenes in effect responds to the implicit appeal from the officiant for anybody who thinks the marriage should not take place. should speak now or else hold his peace. Although Polixines maintains civility when he presses Florizel with questions, we should probably sense his growing anger that bursts out at “Mark your divorce, young sir.” As he goes on, he becomes intemperate: “thou art too base . . . traitor . . . witchcraft . . . I’ll have thy beauty scratch’d with briers.” He even threatens to disown Florizel, and threatens death to Perdita. More reminders of Leontes.

Michael:

I like the idea of Autolycus coming in like Time and addressing the audience, both at 4.3 and at 4.4.598.   He also seems to turn to the audience at 4.4.673 and 835ff. As a trickster and sometime director of the plot, he seems to have some association with the poet. And he certainly acts like a playwright when we last see him manipulating the rustics at the end of the scene.

This act, with its singing and dancing and Autolycus’ antics, is just the kind of theater that drove Ben Jonson crazy. And of course the philosophical distraction of the carnation and gillyvor discussion. I’ve seen the act done as a kind of traveling circus, which was quite effective; the whole theatrical mode shifts into something like pure entertainment — like the dancing in French opera?

Perdita’s mention of the autumnal flowers may be a kind of apology to Polixenes: well, yes, I give you flowers of winter, but I might have given you carnations and gillyvors because you’re not really that old. But we don’t plant Nature’s bastards here. Of course Polixenes’ response and explanation gives us hope that he’ll respond well to the union of Florizel and Perdita, which turns out to be perversely untrue.

But why? He’s quite taken by Perdita and seems to offer some hope that he’ll go along with Florizel’s choice (“Fairly offered” at l. 381). But what maddens him may not be the seeming unfittingness of the marriage itself (and yes, I think this would have been a possibly legal Elizabethan marriage — such as Shakespeare himself contracted?) so much as the refusal of Florizel to tell or consult his father. “One being dead” is a rather rough way to refer to his father, but then Polixenes quizzes him further after saying “Methinks a father Is at the nuptial of his son A guest that best becomes the table.” We don’t seem to know why Florizel is so stubborn about this, but Polixenes gives him multiple chances to admit his father’s knowledge. It’s as if Florizel is complicit in turning his father into the violently heavy father of comedy.

This seems to start the play again. Camillo can turn the need for the couple to escape to his own purpose of returning to Sicily. His recommendation to them of a course more promising “Than a wild dedication of yourselves To unpathed waters, undreamed shores” creates what must be someone’s book title. It’s not exactly clear why exchanging clothes with Autolycus helps the couple’s escape. Florizel is dressed as a shepherd, so what does a peddler’s outfit do to help? Maybe there’s foreseen the possibility that Bohemians will recognize him in his shepherd clothes? But since Autolycus now acts the part of a courtier, perhaps Florizel had courtly clothes under his shepherd outfit?  In any case, it gives Autolycus an excuse to take the old shepherd and his son  to Polixenes and motivate his travel to Sicily. The scene with the two rustics is very leisurely spun out. Of course it’s necessary to get Perdita’s baby identification to Sicily.

Everything now bends toward Sicily, where we expect the recognition scene of Perdita and her betrothal (again) to the forgiven Florizel.

Dusty:

On the remainder of 4.4:

Florizel acts the part of a heroic lover: “What I was, I am . . . Let nature crush the sides o’ th’earth together . . .Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may/ Be thereat glean’d; for all the sun sees or/ The close earth wombs . .  will I break my oath.” Camillo, as you note, decides the “frame” Florizel’s plan “to serve my turn.” And then Autolycus comes in and decides to frame the plan to Shepherd and Clown to serve his turn. (Even Clown and Shepherd seek to serve their own ends by revealing the truth about Perdita’s birth.)

But it’s all as you say rather “leisurely.” Does it drag? A lot would depend on the actor playing Autolycus. I suspect that a modern director might cut a lot of it.

It is Camillo who takes on the role of dramatist: he says he will arrange for appropriate royal costumes, “as if/ The scene you play were mine.” My editor notes that in fact Camillo does not do this. Or maybe he just changes his mind when he sees Autolycus:  he dresses Florizel in Autolycus’s cloak.

Dusty:

5.1

As the scene opens Leontes’ counselors have been advising him to remarry. And Leontes is apparently leaning that way. Maybe that explains Paulina’s brutal language: “she you kill’d.” Leontes may be more concerned about the loss of an heir than the loss of a wife. It would appear that Paulina has already devised her plot, and here seeks to get Leontes’ promise that he will let her choose his new wife. So the scene begins with Paulina in the weaker position and ends with her in charge.

Florizel’s entrance reminds us that there are two plots afoot: Paulina’s and Camillo’s (in which Florizel plays his part). Both plots are, as it were, aimed at Leontes, who has already done penitence for wronging Hermione and now  repeatedly expresses his regret for his folly in wronging Polixenes. Paulina presumably does not know of Camillo’s plot, which would explain why she chastises the servant for his high praise of Perdita as “the most peerless piece of earth.”

With the Lord’s entrance at 178 the plots begin to unravel, and Shakespeare’s plot to thicken or tighten. His opening line (“That which I shall report will bear no credit”) might be Shakespeare’s own hint that we are shifting from a world of tragedy to a world where marvels and miracles are possible. And we’re getting ready for all the characters, from both Sicily and Bohemia, to gather on the stage.

I am surprised that Florizel says they are contracted but not married. I suppose that ratchets up, or prolongs, the tension.

5.2 Shakespeare must have decided that he didn’t want two big scenes of revelation, didn’t want the miraculous finding of the king’s lost daughter/heir and the reunion of the two kings to take away from the even more miraculous rebirth of Hermione. So we get a report of the first scene from three gentlemen, with Autolycus performing the role of moderator or interviewer. We are twice told that it’s “like an old tale.” Shakespeare reminds us that we are in never-never land, where one “wonder” follows another.

They report that Paulina is especially moved. Does the knowledge that the king now has an heir change, or just speed up, her plan to bring Hermione to life? Now she will be able to restore Hermione to her husband and to her daughter. The report that everybody was moved, that even “who was most marble, there changed colour,” obviously hints that the marble statue is going to move.

I leave off at 112, when the Three Gentlemen exit. Over to you for the remainder of 5.2 and the final scene.

Michael:

I think Shakespeare surprises us by not doing the recognition scene we expect at 5.2. The narrated recognition scene between Autolycus and First, Second, and Third gentlemen teases us with what’s been elided, creating a puzzle that will only be revealed in the final scene. And it happens in the very language that conveys this first recognition that isn’t a scene. The First Gent says, in prose, “There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed.” He says they were puzzled between joy and sorrow. The next gent is more helpful, but not more specific, “Nothing but bonfires. The oracle is fulfilled.” The Lady Paulina’s steward advances the paradox, “that which you hear you’ll swear you see.” But of course we don’t see. “Did you see the meeting of the two kings?” Well, no. “Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of.” In fact, it’s a scene that is simply too much, it seems, one joy crowning another, casting up of eyes, joy wading in tears, Leontes begging forgiveness of Polixenes, embracing Florizel, overpowering Perdita, etc. The bizarre character of the narration may culminate in the description of Paulina, who has one eye declined in sorrow for Antigonus and one eye elevated that the oracle was fulfilled. The language becomes positively baroque when Third Gent says that one of the “prettiest touches,” and that which angled for mine eyes — caught the water but not the fish” was the recollection of Hermione’s death. The effect on Perdita seem to cause her “to bleed tears; for I am sure my heart wept blood.” It’s theatrical language pushed to the furthest extreme, but –strangely — without the visual enactment.  That visual enactment seems for the moment to have been left to Julio Romano, whose art in conveying Hermione seems almost to exceed Nature in its power.

The brief scene that follows between Autolycus and the shepherd and his son seems to be simply distracting silliness, but perhaps something Shakespeare finds personally amusing.  Autolycus is impressed by his having played a part in the happy recognition, though he’s not sure it fits well with his professional life. And the old shepherd and son are pleased at now being “gentlemen born.” And the younger one was a gentleman born before his father, though it was just four hours ago. Of course we know of a playwright who became “a gentleman born” before his father became one, and he must have been twitted about this, or maybe self-twitted. Anyway, the odds are now turned on Autolycus, who must now appeal to the new gentlemen born.

I think the final scene plays with the audience just as much as the previous scene does. When do we become aware that the “statue” isn’t really a statue? Not until the characters on stage do, I think, not until Paulina asks for the music and commands, “Tis time; descend.” I’ve heard gasps in the audience when this happens. One assumes that the “statue” is upstage in the discovery space since Paulina presumably has to draw the curtain. This means the actor playing Hermione must stand absolutely motionless for several minutes. But one sees this in those sidewalk performers, mainly in Europe perhaps, who are able to do this in spite of all the movement and challenges around them. So it must have been a skill in the Jacobean theater. I have seen the “statue” positioned rather daringly downstage, and it worked this way as well. Most audiences aren’t readers and therefore don’t know what’s coming, so it’s quite wonderful to see the reaction.

I confess I’ve written about this scene; it was the culmination of my book about iconoclasm and theater. And in rereading that I find I can’t really say more. Perdita asks to be absolved of superstition in worshiping the statue, kissing its hand. Leontes identifies Hermione in the “dear stone” not chiding him and is astounded at its updated aging (“so much the more our carver’s excellence”). Leontes comes to the point at which he too must kiss the statue, shockingly violating all strictures against idolatry. But of course the dramatic carver uses bodies rather than marble.

Can I send you what I’ve written on the scene?

Dusty:

The more I think about it, the more remarkable Act 5 seems, not only in the bold presentation of a miracle-that’s-not-a-miracle, but in the preparation for that scene with the recognition-scene-that-we-are-not-allowed-to-see, and in the juxtaposition of what you well call a “displaced religious ritual” with the low and low-minded comedy of Autolycus, Clown, and Shepherd.

Thanks for scanning the pages on WT from your iconoclasm book. You bring out the seriousness of the issues underlying the statue scene. You carefully show that it’s not really religious ritual but is quasi-religious. I can’t add to what you say.

I had been thinking that there is more Autolycus in the play than there needs to be, that I was becoming impatient with the time devoted to him. But I am now thinking that, especially in the theatre, his presence is essential in setting off the court plot (jealousy and repentance, separation and reunion, death and rebirth). Perhaps he is on stage with the three gents because Shakespeare wants to make that scene comic — as opposed to the similar scene earlier in the play when Cleomenes and Dion report on the oracle. I can imagine that while the three gents make their reports Autolycus might caper about the stage, “directing” the three gents to speak, and laughingly subverting the recognitions and reconciliations, inviting the audience to laugh at the improbabilities.

The statue scene is powerful, and although I have not seen it in the theatre I can imagine audience members gasping in awe and wonder. But it is also a kind of magic show. And even Paulina hints that it’s no more believable than an old “tale” — that words recurs several times in the play. But it also seems to be about more than spectacle. It’s deeply gratifying to the audience that Hermione is “restored” to life, and restored to Leontes, that jealousy and cruelty can be overcome by repentance, and that all will be well. (Well, almost all: the deaths of Mamilius and Antigonus are not undone, though in some respects Florizel is the restored Mamilius and Camillo the restored Antigonus.)

I understand that the scene needs to be drawn out to make the spectacle more moving and marvelous. But at the level of human interaction, why does Paulina draw it out so long? What more does she want from Leontes before she restores Hermione to him? Has he not fully repented over sixteen years?

And when Paulina instructs Leontes (and that others on stage) that you must “awake your faith,” what does she mean? Faith/trust in me? Faith in the power of art? faith that miracles can happen?

The observers must “stand still” to watch the statue “move.” And the statue itself must be “awakened” by music. Does standing “still” also suggest that “time” — we hear a lot about the passage of time, and the “gap of time” — somehow stops?

What is the relationship between the “art/ That nature makes” and the art that Paulina/Julio Romano deploys?

Michael:

I’m so glad you found useful my conclusions in the iconoclasm book; in a way the whole book was working toward those thoughts. But of course there’s more to say about the last act of WT, and I’m struck by what you raise about Autolycus. In our discussions and reading, it occurs to me that he’s rather important to Shakespeare, certainly more than his simple plot role. In his trickery and “art” he seems to achieve a significance that has something to do with the power of theater and playwrighting. He seems to drop out in the final scene and is replaced by Paulina, whose instruction to “awake your faith” seems to mean all of what you suggest.

As you note, tragedy isn’t exactly suppressed in the play, maybe especially poignantly in the loss of Mamillius. That replacement of Antigonus with Camillo at the end looks like Shakespeare’s almost knee-jerk response to not leaving anyone unpartnered at the end. But it seems to stand for something more here, a kind of insistent fulfilling of the need for love and companionship, even though it seems almost part of the play’s machinery. To me, Paulina seems the most important instrumental character in the play, and Sh., I think, can’t bear to leave her unfulfilled or unhappy at the end. We wonder about what will happen in those conversations when they leisurely each demand and answer to their parts in that “wide gap of time.” It’s rather frank and touching that Leontes encourages Hermione to look upon Polixenes, and begs their forgiveness that he ever raised “ill suspicion” in what he now calls their “holy looks.”

I wonder if WT is an attempt to see if tragedy can be undone or reversed by romance structures, and whether those structures can correspond to anything in actual life. The romances seem to respond to, or recapitulate, to elements of the great tragedies. Yes, what is the relationship between the “art that nature makes” and Paulina’s or Julio Romano’s art? Of course the art that carves the wrinkles in Hermione’s face is nature’s, but the art that somehow resolves is Paulina’s and the playwright’s.

Dusty:

I like what you say about seeing if tragedy can be reversed by romance, and whether the reversal can correspond to anything in real life: WT imagines that repentance and forgiveness and renewal of life are possible.

“Awake your faith”: does Paulina mean to imply that their “faith” was somehow asleep?

Maybe it’s especially important for Paulina to find a mate since everybody else on stage has found or recovered one. What do we think about her “poor-me” moment when she says she will fly off to a withered bough? (Remember that Shakespeare does not provide a mate for Antonio in MV).

Yes, it is a wonderful moment when Leontes invites Hermione and Polixenes to look at each other.

As for “art,” do we imagine that Paulina the artist has clothed, and painted, and posed the “statue”? It’s clear that she directs the little dramatic scene/tableau vivant. What is the relationship between the spectacle that she arranges and the various spectacles in the big sheep-shearing festival? Could a director suggest that they are related?