Precious Winners All

The Winter's Tale as an anti-tragedy

One abandoned as a child unknowingly returns home to restore a kingdom in dire straits, but this time it ends not in tragedy but redemption. In many ways, The Winter’s Tale mirrors the tropes of Greek Tragedy in general, and Oedipus Rex in particular, with the key difference that it ends not with despair but in utter joy and redemption. Some of these parallels feel so deliberate, that it feels possible to imagine that Shakespeare deliberately set himself the task of writing an anti-tragedy — that is, a play that is essentially structurally a tragedy, but somehow ends with joy instead of misery.

In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus was sent to his death as a baby after a prophecy that his father Laius, King of Thebes, would be killed by his son. A shepherd was ordered to leave him exposed, but disobeying he handed him to Polybus, a childless king in Corinth, who raises him as his own. As an adult, not knowing the story of his adoption, and receiving a prophecy of his own that he would murder his father and sleep with his mother, Oedipus leaves Corinth and, after casually killing some guy on the road, arrives in Thebes, where he finds out that their king has been casually killed on the road by some guy (who could that possibly be?) and also they’re being tormented by a creature called The Sphinx. Oedipus defeats the Sphinx by answering its riddle and becomes king and marries the queen. I think you know the rest.

In The Winter’s Tale, Perdita is similarly ordered to die by exposure as a baby, in this case because Leontes, the king of Sicilia is irrationally suspicious that his wife, Hermione, has been unfaithful with his former friend Polixenes, the King of Bohemia. Instead of sending a shepherd, Leontes sends a courtier Antigonus, who takes the child to Bohemia, where he leaves her with some money and information, and she is found by a shepherd, who raises her. This is when Antigonus is famously pursued by a bear. Already we have an interesting reversal of a dynamic in Oedipus: a shepherd handing the child to a noble, and a shepherd finding a child left by a noble.

Leontes puts his wife on trial for her alleged infidelity, and also sends two men to the island of Delphos to receive to hear the oracle. We know how such prophecies tend to go. They are broad, open to interpretation, and find ways to come true however you subvert them. This prophecy is pretty blatant (though Leontes still manages to find a way to deny it):

OFFICER reads
Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly begotten; and the King shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.

LORDS
Now blessèd be the great Apollo!

HERMIONE
Praised!

LEONTES
Hast thou read truth?

OFFICER
Ay, my lord, even so as it is here set down.

LEONTES
There is no truth at all i’ th’ oracle.
The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.

What seems to wake Leontes up from his jealous rage is learning his son has died. Whether it is the fact that it immediately fulfils the prophecy that he will lack an heir, or the shock that his actions have led to the death of his son, he is suddenly remorseful. Hermione dies from the grief (or does she?) and Leontes repents. The particular irony here is that Antigonus is yet to carry out his orders, but with no way of communicating with him, we see him right away, leaving Perdita in Bohemia before dying himself.

It appears that all is lost, but we are only three acts into this five act play. This is where Shakespeare throws in a curveball: a time skip. We’ve potentially got used to time skips, with a “16 years later” title card, but it is clearly such a strange thing to do at the time of writing that Shakespeare felt the need for an actor representing Time to address the audience:

TIME
I, that please some, try all—both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error—
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage that I slide
O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
To plant and o’erwhelm custom.

This speech does a similar job to a good act 2 opener: we are reminded of the details that have gone before, and thrust into the second half with just enough information. It’s a brilliant conceit to make the chorus a personification of Time. The lingering nature of love, death, life, and grief is a core theme to the play, and the effects of time are crucial to the action of the play.

The 16-year time skip, as well as the change in setting between Sicilia and Bohemia, two distant outposts of the Hellenstic world, also makes the play violate the so-called Classical Unities in an extreme way. The theory of Classical Unities was developed in the early sixteenth century in Italy, based on misreadings of Aristotle. The theory is particularly considered as a prescriptive model for tragedy that should have a unity of time, place, and action. According to the theory a tragedy should unfold over at most 24 hours, in one location, and with one driving action. Shakespeare isn’t even close to following these rules in his own tragedies (or his plays in general with the exception of The Tempest), but he would almost certainly be aware of the theory, and it feels like he was conscious of how particularly he was breaking it here. The Winter’s Tale is a late play, and it certainly feels like Shakespeare is revelling in his playwriting virtuosity, deliberately breaking rules to cause problems for himself because he knows how to work around them.

Act 4 is good and important but it’s long and I don’t have many points to make. Perdita and Florizell, the Prince of Bohemia, fall in love. As far as everyone is concerned, Perdita is a shepherd’s daughter, and when Polixenes discovers the lovers, he commands the execution of Perdita and her father. Perdita and Florizell escape to Sicilia, where Leontes is still atoning for his actions sixteen years before, and promises to Hermione’s closest friend Paulina that he will not marry until he sees one as beautiful as Hermione, and only with Paulina’s permission, much to the concern of the other courtiers concerned with the future of the kingdom.

When Perdita and Florizell arrive, they lie about the reason for their flight, but Polixenes has followed them, tipped off by a scheming servant. Fortunately the shepherd has also followed them, with the information that proves Perdita’s true heritage, and there is a tearful and joyful reunion. The fascinating thing about this reunion to me is that we do not see it. It is instead reported to us by characters so peripheral they don’t have names:

SECOND GENTLEMAN
Has the King found his heir?

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance. That which you hear you’ll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, which they know to be his character, the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding, and many other evidences proclaim her with all certainty to be the King’s daughter. Did you see the meeting of the two kings?

SECOND GENTLEMAN
No.

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Then have you lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears.

This might seem like a bizarre choice, and frankly it is! There is nothing in this scene that is unstageable. In the theatre we tend to want to see what is happening. So why avoid it? For me this is the strongest evidence of a conscious use of the tropes of Greek Tragedy. One of the most famous elements of Oedipus Rex is Oedipus blinding himself because he cannot look upon what he has done. But this doesn’t happen on stage. The blinding and Jocasta’s hanging are reported by a servant of the household. This was a common feature of Greek Tragedy, in which death and violence was not seen on the stage but reported. Such things were to happen off the stage, or skene (this is where we get the word “obscene” from). There was even a device called an ekkyklema, specifically designed for the purpose of wheeling a corpse on the stage.

Just as in Greek Tragedy, the catharsis comes with reported events, so in The Winter’s Tale, only in this case with a cathartic joy. It may well be that just as the brutality of Oedipus’s blinding or Jocasta’s suicide is stronger for being reported than seen, the joy might be all the stronger from being reported and not seen.

But Shakespeare allows us to have our cake and eat it. When it feels like nothing more can be done for the joy and reconciliation at the end of the play, when we witness the impossible: she who was dead, come to life. Paulina has apparently commissioned an extremely lifelike statue of Hermione, apparently aged to the age she would be now had she lived. Leontes finds it so convincing that he wishes to approach the statue for a kiss. Paulina forbids it as the paint on the lips is still drying. Then she pulls off her miracle. Hermione descends and lives. Though looking around I’ve been convinced by the textual evidence that this is not a magical event, but a long scheme perpetrated by Paulina involving the hiding of Hermione for such a moment, reading or watching this moment truly feels magical. As far as we were all concerned this woman who was dead is now alive. There’s something almost devotional in the Christian sense of the way redemption comes about in this play. The joy is as high as the earlier tragedy was low, and just when we thought things couldn’t get better, they do.

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I’m giving The Winter’s Tale a 9/10. The dropped point comes from a very long Act 4 Scene 4. The scene is full of dance and song, so would likely have been a lot of fun to watch back in the day, but we could probably do with a little less of it in a modern production, or at least weave it in a little more to the action. Nevertheless, it is fantastic and I have enjoyed reading it a great deal.

Next week, we have the deeply problematic The Taming of the Shrew, so stay tuned!