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The Winter’s Tale

The Winter’s Tale. Advanced Higher. Who was most marble there changed colour (V,ii,96-7) Warm life, As now it coldly stands (V, iii, 35-6). Romance. Heightened reality. Jealousy. Leontes’ jealousy is sudden and violent

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The Winter’s Tale

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  1. The Winter’s Tale Advanced Higher

  2. Who was most marble there changed colour (V,ii,96-7) • Warm life, As now it coldly stands (V, iii, 35-6)

  3. Romance • Heightened reality

  4. Jealousy • Leontes’ jealousy is sudden and violent • There is no influence other than his own ‘pestered’ thoughts: “Too hot, too hot!...my heart dances but not for joy, not joy” (1.2.108-11) • “paddling palms and pinching fingers” (115) • 1.2.192-206 – sexual disgust • His wife is “slippery” • “I have drunk and seen the spider” (2.1.39-45) • Hermione’s response: “When you shall come to clearer knowledge Gentle my Lord” (2.1.141-2)

  5. Pregnancy • Regal breeding • Birth is “the play’s central miracle” (C Neely) • The word “issue” is used throughout the play meaning children and result, e.g. • “something rare Even then will rush to knowledge…And gracious be the issue!” (III,I,20-22) • “Thou met’st with things dying, I with things new born” (III, iii, 112-113) • “The child was prisoner to the womb…” (2.2.58-60) • Reproduction by three women – Paulina, Hermione, Perdita – repair the damage of two men

  6. Leontes and Polixenes • Childhood friends: “Two lads that thought there was no more behind But such a day tomorrow as today, And to be boy eternal” (1.2.62-5) • They are too close and both want to hold on to childhood: “we were as twinned lambs” • They see adulthood as tainted by oringinal sin: 1.2.67-74 • Hermione says they have “tripp’d since” and “Your queen and I are devils”

  7. Paulina • “I do come with words as medicinal as true Honest as either” (2.3.35) • Points out the baby’s likeness to L – eye, nose, lip…(2.3.102) • Leontes uses word “bastard” 8 times • “Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel And call me father?” (2.3.153-4)

  8. Act 3 • Fresh air contrasts with the claustrophobic court: “The climate’s delicate, the air most sweet, Fertile the isle” (3.1.1-2) • Regrets that the court is no longer “ceremonious, solemn” (3.1.7)

  9. Justice • Leontes: “Let us be cleared Of being tyrannous, since we so openly Proceed in justice” • Hermione defends herself with dignity: “If powers divine Behold our human actions…” • Leontes has angered the gods: “Apollo pardon my great profaneness” • http://www.mythweb.com/gods/Apollo.html • Paulina criticises Leontes “Run mad indeed, stark mad” (3.2.181) • “Do not repent these things, for they are heavier than all thy woes can stir” (3.2.207)

  10. Final scene of Act 3 • Acts as a bridge between tragedy and comedy, Sicilia and Bohemia • Lord Antigonus has an “awaking” dream of Hermione “in pure white robes” • Bear shows savage side of nature • Shepherd takes us to another world, talking of ‘country matters’ like hunting and wenching

  11. Time • Makes aware that Time brings in “freshest things” but can also “make stale the glistering of this present” (4.1.12-14) • Autolycus – mythical element • Sourness of court gives way to sweetness of country

  12. Peer • Word used a lot – look and heir • “Flora/Peering in April’s front” (4.4.2-3)

  13. Flowers • Florizel dresses Perdita up as Flora and she gives flowers to her guests: rosemary, rue, daffodils, violets, ‘pale primroses’…(4.4.118-124) • The great debate • Perdita calls carnations “Nature’s bastards” • Polixenes says cross-breeding is “an Art which does mend Nature” (4.4.95-7) • Elizabethans loved discussing the relationship between Art and Nature • The vital point is that the relationship is genrative • Irony in the stances they take?

  14. Love • “What you do still betters what is done…When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ th’ sea that you might ever do nothing but that – move still, still so, and own no other function” (4.4.135-146)

  15. Polixenes • Objects to marriage – “I’ll have thy beauty scratched with briers and made more homely than thy state” (4.4.429-30)

  16. issue • “Care nor for issue The crown will find an heir” (5.1.46-7)

  17. Perdita • Beauty • Leontes thinks she is a ‘goddess’ • There is not great proof of her identity – love must have trust • The Gentlemen discuss the meeting of the two kings in a scene of speech without drama • This prepares us for the scene of dram without speech

  18. Last Scene • Art - “Your gallery have we passed through” • Leontes addresses the statue indirectly, “Oh, thus she stood” then directly “There’s magic in thy majesty” • His gaze seems to bring her to life bit by bit: “And that those veins Did verily bear blood…The very life seems warm upon her lip…The fixture of her eye” (5.3.63-8)

  19. Paulina • In charge: “music awake her: strike” (5.3.98) • L: “If this me magic, let it be an art Lawful as eating” (109-11) • P is Shakespeare on stage: “If you can behold it I’ll make the statue move” (87-8)

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