LECTURE ON THE WINTER’S TALE
(All citations are to the Signet Paperback edition of the play)
Introduction
The Winter’s Tale was written 1610-1611, a time when Shakespeare was preparing to retire from the King's Men. He had a home and extensive property in Stratford, and his two daughters had married local men. The acting company had the large public theater, the Globe, and a smaller, more exclusive private indoor theater at the Blackfriars within the city limits. The Winter’s Tale is undoubtedly the next-to-the last play Shakespeare wrote entirely on his own before his retirement from the stage. It is a play which shares much of the passion and anguish of Shakespeare’s great tragedies but within the context of a magical world in which human suffering is viewed in more benevolently.
In the last few years of his career Shakespeare did an extraordinary thing. He consciously turned from the tragic themes and complex characters like Iago, Hamlet and Macbeth. He wrote four plays on the idea of redemption using less complicated characters but with highly intricate and poetic language. These plays came to be called "romances" by generations following Shakespeare because they all have stories of high adventure, magical power and many coincidences, much as the romance stories of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. (You may recall that Don Quixote by Shakespeare's contemporary Cervantes was obsessed with romances.) Noted literary scholar Frank Kermode said about the romances:
In them Shakespeare tried new things and abstained from much he had
done well before. They have an astonishing simplicity and lucidity, yet
never seem to be leaving life entirely out. They are baffling in design and
often in texture, and we can love them and know them well without feeling certain that we know why they are as they are.
The romances (Cymbeline, Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest) all share some things in common. They are all set in distant lands or olden times. They all have as their central characters rulers who are under threat of being overthrown. These characters are often responsible for their own threatened downfall because of their sinful actions. They all involve the innocent daughter of a king who is the instrument of order being restored. All the plays end in a wedding or reaffirmation of marriage vows. Although the plays are classified as comedies and do have some comic scenes, they are not the laugh-a-minute, slam-bang kinds of funny plays like A Midsummer Dream. Instead their most important effect is the restoration of order and the redemption of people who have managed to screw their lives up. There is an almost religious quality about the romances, as though Shakespeare were showing us how God might view humankind. Through innocence and many coincidences the romances demonstrate over and over how good comes out of apparent evil and how much of what we experience in daily life is an illusion, if only we could see it. Because it shares the theme of a good man’s misplaced jealousy for his faithful wife, The Winter’s Tale is most closely associated with Othello.
The major source for The Winter’s Tale is a prose story, Pandosto, by Shakespeare’s contemporary Robert Greene. This was an ironic choice for Shakespeare to use. Back at the beginning of his career, in 1592, the first public notice of Shakespeare as a playwright had come in a savage attack on the young dramatist by Greene, who called him “an upstart crow” and accused him of stealing from other writers’ works. Here at the end of his career Shakespeare did indeed “steal” from Greene, who was long since dead. But as he did with all the works he used as the bases for his plays, Shakespeare transformed a rather prosaic story into something extraordinary. He added characters and heightened the conflict at the heart of the play. Rather than just telling us that a character becomes insanely jealous, Shakespeare takes us literally into the madness of a man who believes his wife has betrayed him. One other difference between the play and its source story is that Shakespeare reverses the two settings for the conflict: the jealousy takes place in the Italian court of Sicily and the redemption associated with the natural world takes place in Bohemia. I think this difference may well be significant, as I’ll explain later in the lecture.
The title of the play is intriguing. In Shakespeare’s day a “winter’s tale” referred to an entertaining story of no particular importance, something that would while away a long winter’s evening. In the play itself the little boy Mallilius says, “A sad tale’s best for winter.” This certainly is a sad tale, at least through the first three acts. The word “tale” suggests something that is made up, an account used to frighten, instruct or amuse. However, with the definite article “the,” Shakespeare may have wanted to emphasize the idea that this is not just another trivial story. He may have wanted to reinforce the idea that the tragic first half of the play does indeed represent the harshness of winter, the season in which the action takes place. The second half takes place in the fall, a time of harvest and fullness. This idea of the natural cycle of life, of rebirth and regeneration following the season of death is an important theme in the play.
The Winter’s Tale was first published in Shakespeare’s First Folio, the first collected works printed in 1623. That means that during Shakespeare’s lifetime the play was apparently not enough of a success to warrant a separate publication in a quarto edition. After the theaters were closed by the Puritans in 1640 the play was not performed again for about 100 years, a fate that often befell Shakespeare’s comedies which were thought to be too topical or not serious enough. When The Winter’s Tale finally returned to the English stage it did so in a truncated form. (Shakespeare’s plays were often rewritten during the eighteenth century to fit the more refined tastes of the theater public who liked their plays clearly comic or tragic but never mixed and who found the emotional impact of some plays too much.) Selected scenes from this comedy were performed in stylized fashion, such as the trial of Hermione or the sheep-shearing or the statue scene. One noted 19th Century theater writer declared that no audience would want to see the play without major cuts and revisions; the original was “too superstitious.” It was not until a famous production in 1912 by Granville-Barker that The Winter’s Tale was again performed in its entirety. Since then the Royal Shakespeare Company has performed the play with great success, such as the production I saw at Stratford back around 1980 starring Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation as Leontes. The play has been done a number of times in this area after the most powerful production I have ever seen, the production in Ashland in 1976 which revealed to theater audiences what could be done with the challenging text and strange design of the play. More than any other Shakespearean comedy, in my opinion, The Winter’s Tale has to be seen in production to fully appreciate the power of the text.
Part of that power comes from the language. Earlier I had said the characters in the romances are less complex than those of the mature tragedies; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are much more complicated in their motives and anxieties than Leontes and Hermione. But the language of these characters is at least as challenging as that of the earlier Scottish couple. In part this is because much of the play takes place within Leontes’ overheated imagination, and that madness is reflected in a kind of compressed imagery and twisted syntax. Shakespeare makes us feel what it is like to see the world through the filter of an insane jealousy. The other factor which makes the language challenging is that Shakespeare has his courtly characters speak with a kind of refined diction, specialized vocabulary and habitual indirection of expression. We will take our time working through the complex language.
The other challenge which this play poses is the unusual structure. The play has been called a romantic tragic-comedy. The first half is as tragic as any of the major tragedies, almost totally unrelieved by any comic relief at all. Then in Act III, Scene 3, line 57 the play, without warning, changes into a kind of romantic comedy, which often surprises audiences. The last half of the play resolves most of the conflicts and difficulties of the first half. It does not make the tragedy disappear, but it does show us human problems from a different perspective, one that shows us a kind of higher power governing human fate. We will see the artful way Shakespeare brings about this enlightening experience.
Act I, Scene 1
In the first act we will see Leontes, without warning, fall into a madly passionate jealousy over his wife and his best friend. By the end of the first act he will be actively plotting his friend’s murder and preparing for the destruction of his wife. And yet the opening scene is short, filled with a slightly ironic comic view of a state visit. Who are Camillo and Archidamus, and what are they talking about in this scene? [Act I, scene 1]
King Polixenes, ruler of Bohemia, has been paying an extended state visit to his childhood friend Leontes, monarch of Sicily (“Sicilia” in Shakespeare’s version.) Shakespeare took the place names from Greene’s story Pandosto, but they represent not real places for the English audience of 1611 but rather exotic-sounding locations which would heighten the sense of romantic fantasy which the playwright wanted to create. It made no difference to them that Sicily and Bohemia (a province of northern Hungary) were hundreds of miles apart. Similarly the time in which the play takes place is equally vague: the characters still worship ancient Greek deities but there are many anachronistic references to Christian belief. I believe it is significant that the play opens in Sicily, which the audience might well associate with the Italian Renaissance and the kind of culture which valued indirection and courtly refinement. These behaviors were reflected in the famous work which defined the cult of the courtly gentleman, Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. We see this pattern of indirection and elaborate linguistic rituals in the exchange in this scene.
Archidamus is the chief courtier for Polixenes, and Camillo serves Leontes. As courtiers they are very familiar with the courtly language of diplomacy. (“Courtiers” were originally gentlemen who served the king in capacities which required language skills, refinement of manners and delicacy of taste.) Archidamus begins his praise of their reception in Sicilia by complaining that when the state visit is reciprocated in Bohemia, the court of Polixenes will be unable to equal their treatment: “you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia” [lines 3-4]. He suggests that the Bohemians will hide the inferiority of the entertainment by giving the Sicilians “sleepy drinks” [line 15] so they won’t notice. Camillo protests that Archidamus is making too much fuss over the reception of the Sicilian court: “You pay a great deal too dear [too much money] for what is given freely” [lines 18-19]. From Camillo we learn at line 23 that the two monarchs are the very best of friends:
Sicilia [Leontes] cannot show himself overkind [too kind] to
Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods;
and there rooted betwixt them then such
an affection, which cannot choose but branch [blossom] now.
Because of the restrictions of their positions, the two kings have been unable to visit each other until now, but they have frequently exchanged “gifts, letters, loving embassies” [line 29] so that it is as if they have shaken hands in friendship over the great physical distance between them.
One of the characteristics of courtly language, such as these two use, is the ability to flatter those who share the jargon. At line 35 Archidamus begins again to praise the Sicilian court, this time by focusing on Leontes’ little son, Mamillius, who is about six: “You have an unspeakable/ comfort of your young Prince Mamillius; it is a/ gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into/ my note” [lines 35-38]. He’s a nice little kid, but he’s only a kid! But Camillo at line 39 picks up on the flattery and increases the hyperbole to the point where it becomes a joke, one that both these professional courtiers laugh about:
Camillo: I very well agree with you in the hopes of
him. It is a gallant child; one that, indeed, physics [medicates]
the subject, makes old hearts fresh; they that went
on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to
see him a man.
Archidamus: Would they else be content to die?
Camillo: Yes, if there were no other excuse why they
should desire to live.
Archidamus: If the King had no son, they would desire
to live on crutches till he had one.
The subjects of Sicilia are so happy about the little prince Mamillius that he has become their sole reason for living. Elderly folks who rely on crutches only hang around until he comes of age. Archidamus, with a touch of gentle mockery, suggests that even if Leontes had no son, old people would find an excuse to want to live. This whole exchange, in flowery prose, has shown us two men who are very comfortable with each other and with the system of courtly interchange; they’re old pros. It also shows us the deep friendship between Leontes and Polixenes which is about to be destroyed. In ironic foreshadowing the very things which these men praise, including the joy in the young heir Mamillius, are in extreme danger.
Act One, Scene Two
In this long scene Leontes will descend into a self-imposed hell, going from trusting friend and loving husband to a madman plotting the destruction of both his wife and friend. It is the equivalent of Act III, Scene 2 in Othello where the proud hero makes a similar transition. However, Othello’s jealousy is wrought by the arch villain Iago. The question we face here is what sets off Leontes’ jealous rage in the first 108 lines. [Act I, scene 2, lines 1 – 108]
The scene starts innocently enough. Using the elaborate language of the court, Polixenes says he has stayed too long and will be leaving Leontes’ court the next day. How long has Polixenes been there? What’s unusual about the way he expresses his gratitude? He explains at lines 1—9:
Nine changes of the watery star [the moon] hath
been
The shepherd's note since we have left our throne
Without a burden: time as long again
Would be filled up, my brother, with our thanks;
And yet we should, for perpetuity,
Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher,
Yet standing in rich place, I multiply
With one 'We thank you' many thousands moe [more]
That go before it.
The watery star or moon changes monthly, so Polixenes has been there nine months, a number which becomes significant to Leontes later. If the visiting king took the same length of time to thank his host, it would not be enough time. He could express his gratitude forever (a perpetuity), and it would still not be enough. Therefore, he asks Leontes to think of him as a zero (cipher) standing in a mathematical position of great value, say the “0” immediately to the right of “1” in the number 1,000,000. It takes Polixenes nine lines to say that he’s leaving and to express his gratitude, but this is what the situation and the courtly culture required.
Like any good host Leontes doesn’t want his guest to leave. However, Polixenes offers two reasons: first, he is worried about what troubles may occur back home that would make him regret having made the visit [lines 11-14]; secondly, he feels he has outstayed his welcome [lines 14-15]. Leontes dismisses this argument, saying he is tougher than to be bothered by Polixenes’ stay. From lines 16 – 19 we see a second kind of language, the use of words in a masculine kind of struggle for control:
POLIXENES: No longer stay.
LEONTES: One seven-night longer.
POLIXENES: Very sooth, to-morrow.
LEONTES: We'll part the time between's then; and in that
I'll no gainsaying [allow no denying].
The lines here are short, few words, as the men struggle for control. Leontes tries to shut down the argument at the end. Polixenes retorts that only Leontes could have a chance of changing his mind, but that he must return home and that Leontes’ efforts to keep him there only cause him pain. He really wants to go home.
So at line 27, Leontes turns to his queen, Hermione, and urges her to use her skill to make his friend stay. He asks her, “Tongue-tied, our Queen? Speak you.” Now Hermione is different from her husband. She doesn’t approach this challenge by simply threatening Polixenes at first, the way her husband did. She is very smart, perceptive about language and dearly loves her husband and wants to please him. At lines 28 –33 she counters her guest’s arguments for leaving:
I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until
You have drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir,
Charge him too coldly. Tell him, you are sure
All in Bohemia's well; this satisfaction
The by-gone day proclaim'd [yesterday’s proclamation]: say
this to him,
He's beat from his best ward [defensive position].
She is so confident of her skills of persuasion, she brags that she was waiting until he had taken an oath to leave before she started. She begins by demolishing his argument that he’s worried about how things are in Bohemia, reminding him that a message just the day before had assured him everything was fine. So his only other argument is that his visit is too much trouble for his hosts, who are pleading with him to stay.
At line 34 Hermione now brings up a third argument that Polixenes might have used:
To tell, he longs to see his son, were strong:
But let him say so then, and let him go;
But let him swear so, and he shall not stay,
We'll thwack him hence with distaffs [spindles used by women
in spinning].
Yet of your royal presence I'll adventure
The borrow of a week. When at Bohemia
You take my lord, I'll give him my commission
To let him there a month behind the gest [time allotted for
a royal visit]
Prefix'd for's parting: yet, good deed, Leontes,
I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind
What lady-she [grand lady] her lord. You'll stay?
If Polixenes had said that he wanted to go home to see his little boy, that would have been a compelling argument, so much so that Hermione, as would any mother, would have beaten him with a distaff to force him out. But, of course, he had not made that argument. So instead she tries to bargain with her guest, offering him the right to keep her husband for an extra month when he is in Bohemia, if he will stay another week now. Yet even as she makes this offer, she reassures Leontes, and the audience, that this in no way diminishes the love she feels for her husband.
When Polixenes continues to turn her down, at line 45 he tells her, “I may not, verily.”
Now Hermione picks up on a possible weakness in Polixenes’ insistence. The word verily was a word used most often by women, somewhat like insisting, “No, really!” And so at line 46 she pounces on the nuanced meaning of this one word:
Verily!
You put me off with limber [limp] vows; but I,
Though you would seek to unsphere the stars with oaths,
Should yet say 'Sir, no going.' Verily,
You shall not go: a lady's ‘Verily’’s
As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
Not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees
When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you?
My prisoner? or my guest? by your dread 'Verily,'
One of them you shall be.
Now she insists, much as her husband had back at line 18, but she has articulated the verbal weakness in Polixenes’ insistence, so now she jokingly offers him a choice: stay as my guest or as my prisoner. She’s guessing that if he verily insists on going, she can verily hold him as a prisoner rather easily; then he can simply pay for his room and board when he leaves, much as a prisoner had to pay his jailer, and not have to worry about being unable to thank his hosts. Hermione’s perceptiveness had allowed her, in a gentle, joking manner, to change her guest’s mind. He agrees to stay. At some point just before this Leontes has moved off or been distracted because he misses his friend’s announcement.
Hermione in a high-spirited way now questions Polixenes about his childhood friendship with her husband at line 60: “Come, I'll question you/ O my lord's tricks and yours when you were boys:/You were pretty lordings then?” We can hear the humor in her voice, the way she refers to the tricks of the boys whom she calls pretty lordings, as if the young princes were playing a game of being powerful lords. Polixenes answers at line 62 in a way that helps us see how important this childhood experience had been for him:
We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal.
As innocent children, the boys had no sense of the passage of time, nor did they realize that they and the world would change. What is implicit in this short description is a sense of the power of the fleeting innocence of childhood. In an important foreshadowing, it is this same innocence of children that will redeem both Polixenes and Leontes after they have ruined their own lives and stand n the brink of disaster. Hermione is still in a joking mood and asks at line 65, “Was not my lord/ The verier wag o’ th’ two?” In other words, you may have been innocent boys, but Leontes was the troublemaker, right? These childhood memories have a powerful hold on Polixenes, and he answers in a serious, almost philosophical statement at line 67,
We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' the
sun,
And bleat the one at the other: what we changed [exchanged]
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing [evil], nor dream'd
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd
With stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven
Boldly 'not guilty;' the imposition clear'd
Hereditary ours.
He sees himself and Leontes in childhood as innocent lambs. The image of the “lamb” foreshadows the lambs and sheep of the second half of the play which are associated with Perdita’s innocence. Further, the lamb was historically associated with the Christ Child, an idea which is reinforced in a few lines. They were so innocent as boys they never knew evil nor suspected that it existed in their world. The final complex sentence here, in the last five lines, takes this idea of childish innocence and extends it to a theological concept. Christians traditionally believe that after Adam’s expulsion from Eden, everyone was given the burden of “original sin,” a gift from God that was hereditary ours. This sinful nature was thought to reveal itself as we grew to maturity and were tempted to commit offenses prohibited by the Bible. Polixenes asserts that if he and Leontes had remained children and not grown to adulthood, they would have been able to stand before the Throne of God on Judgment Day and answered “No Guilty” because that original sin had not been in evidence in their innocence.
The implication of this remarkable assertion is that the boys discovered their “original sin” when they discovered sex. At line 75 a playful Hermione catches that suggestion and Polixenes tries to explain his way out:
HERMIONE: By this we gather
You have tripp'd [sinned] since.
POLIXENES: O my most
sacred lady!
Temptations have since then been born
to's [presented to us]; for
In those unfledged days was my wife a girl;
Your precious self had then not cross'd
the eyes [appeared to]
Of my young play-fellow.
HERMIONE: Grace
to boot!
Of this make no conclusion [Don’t go
there!], lest you say
Your queen and I are devils: yet go on;
The offences we have made you do we'll
answer,
If you first sinn'd with us and that with
us
You did continue fault and that you slipp'd
not
With any but with us.
Polixenes agrees that when the boys discovered girls, they found temptation. Rather than being offended by the suggestion that marriage had put the former innocent boys at risk of damnation, Hermione turns it into a kind of joke: your wife and I will take responsibility for your fall from grace, as long as you can assure me that we were the first women with whom you had sex and the only ones! Again, you have to listen to the slightly mocking, comic tone of her lines to see that this high-spirited, supremely self-confident woman means all of this as a pleasant banter between a courtly gentleman and lady, without any suggestion of impropriety. She’s not trying to come on to her guest!
At line 85 Leontes suddenly comes back into the picture; perhaps he had physically left the area where his wife and Polixenes were talking, or perhaps he had been districted by something else. The director and the actor in performance must create some reason why he now suddenly asks the outcome of Hermione’s efforts. Notice what surprises him. The fact that she has gotten Polixenes to stay leads to an interesting revelation about Leontes’ relationship with his wife. What is it? What seems to be Hermione’s attitude throughout this exchange with her husband?
LEONTES: Is he won yet?
HERMIONE: He'll stay my lord.
LEONTES: At my request he would not.
Hermione, my dearest, thou never spokest
To better purpose.
HERMIONE: Never?
LEONTES: Never, but
once.
HERMIONE: What! have I twice said well? when was't before?
I prithee tell me; cram's with praise, and make's
As fat as tame things: one good deed dying tongueless
[unacknowledged]
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages: you may ride's
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre [race at speed a
furlong]. But to the goal:
My last good deed was to entreat his stay:
What was my first? it has an elder sister,
Or I mistake you: O, would her name were Grace
[something gracious]!
But once before I spoke to the purpose: when?
Nay, let me have't; I long [desire to know].
LEONTES: Why,
that was when
Three crabbed [frustrating] months had sour'd
themselves to death,
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand
And clap thyself [shake hands on a deal] my
love: then didst thou utter
'I am yours for ever.'
HERMIONE: 'Tis grace indeed
[see line 99 above].
Why, lo you now, I have spoke to the purpose twice:
The one for ever earn'd a royal husband;
The other for some while a friend.
At line 86 Leontes expresses surprise that Polixenes has changed his mind after being so adamantly about staying, but he praises his wife. When he tells her she has only spoken once before to “better purpose,” she playfully demands to know when that was. As she has from her first lines, she is joking and enjoys bantering with her husband and his friend. As she says at lines 94 -- 96, men can gain much more from women by praising them rather than trying to force them. She urges her husband to tell her what, in his estimation, was the other time she had spoken well, calling such a deed the “elder sister” of her present accomplishment, a deed called “Grace” appropriately. He reveals that she had made him wait for three months before answering his marriage proposal, a wait that obviously frustrated him. It does seem rather odd that he would rank his wife’s acceptance of marriage at the same level as her getting his friend to change his mind about going home, but he does. Hermione accepts this equation graciously and concludes that her verbal skills had won her a royal husband “for ever” and a friend “for some while.”
In the very next line (108) Leontes will be in a full-blown fit of jealousy about his wife and his lifelong friend. Now to Shakespeare’s original audience such a sudden onset of unwarranted madness would be unfortunate but all too common. The very suddenness was part of the mystery, as was the terrible hold it would have on him for the next three acts. When he finally realizes his error, it will disappear as quickly as it had seized him. However, actors and directors in modern productions find it hard to play such a dramatic transformation without further motivation, so that have mined the lines we just considered, looking for hints at what point Leontes may have heard anything that would cause him to suspect his wife of betrayal. The following four examples are choices that different actors playing Leontes have made in productions I have seen.
1.) Perhaps Leontes enters at around line 83 when Hermione is joking with Polixenes and says, “If you first sinned with us, and that with us/ You did continue fault, and that you slipped not/ With any but with us.” Maybe he mistakenly thinks she is referring to an affair his wife is carrying on with his friend.
2.) At line 86 Leontes is struck by the fact that he was unable to get his friend to change his mind but that his wife had been able to do so. Maybe he suddenly wonders what kind of hold she has over Polixenes.
3.) Maybe the thought of his wife making him wait for those “three crabbed months” before she said “yes” has been bothering him all these years. Did she have some doubts about loving him? Was there another man?
4.) Maybe the thing that sets off his jealousy is the very equation he set up: Hermione’s two great achievements were agreeing to marry him and getting Polixenes to change his mind. And when she reiterates that equation calling him “a royal husband” and Polixenes “a friend” in the same breath, it sets off something in her husband’s brain.
These are all props for actors to hang their characterizations on. They do not justify Leontes’ jealousy, nor were they necessary for Shakespeare’s sense of what caused the mad fit. We just have to accept that such destructive fantasies were possible at any time.
In the next sequence we are transported into Leontes’ mad world. Notice how quickly he begins to imagine his wife and friend’s sexual secrets. At first the only witness to this horrible transformation is, improbably, Leontes’ little son, Mamillius, probably five or six years old. The madness quickly spreads. If Polixenes and Hermione are having an affair, and if his friend has been in Sicilia for nine months, obviously his wife is pregnant with Polixenes’ child. It is the constant fear of the cuckold, to have another’s child presented as yours. And if his wife is unfaithful now, how long has that been going on and with whom? [Act I, scene 2, lines 108 – 146]
: [Aside]
Too hot, too hot!
To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.
I have tremor cordis [heart palpitations] on me: my heart
dances;
But not for joy; not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,
And well become the agent; 't may, I grant;
But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,
As now they are, and making practiced smiles,
As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as 'twere
The mort o' th’ deer; O, that is entertainment
My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,
Art thou my boy?
Hermione and Polixenes have moved to one side and are talking confidentially. She may be holding his hand, as was the custom among gentle folks. This kind of slightly flirtatious behavior among well-born gentlemen and gentle ladies was described in detail in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and was associated with courts in Italian city states. This association in the popular imagination among Shakespeare’s audience may be why he changed the location for Leontes’ court from Bohemia, where Greene had originally set it, to Sicilia in Italy. Regardless of the association, Castiglione makes it clear this behavior was innocent. But in Leontes’ imagination it has quickly moved from friendly affection to sex, mingling bloods. The idea of a supposed sexual act between his wife and friend is so powerful his heart is pounding, dancing, but not for joy. He considers that the way his wife is behaving toward Polixenes, “this entertainment,” may be perfectly innocent and a tribute to Hermione’s generosity of spirit, but at line 115 the “reality” of her entertainment reveals itself as he imagines the two of them paddling palms and pinching fingers, as if they were secretly communicating the sexual lust and smiling at each other while they sigh, as if it were the horn which signals the end of the hunt. When Leontes refers to this imagined sigh as the mort o’ th’ deer, he is conveying an elaborate sexual play on words: there’s a pun on deer and dear; then sexual climax was often referred to as a “death” or mort. His suspicion manifests itself in a sudden headache. According to folklore, a cuckolded husband grew horns on his forehead, horns which were invisible to him but which everyone else could see. Hence the cuckold, who would only sense his horns because of a headache, was always worried about public humiliation. If Hermione has betrayed him with his friend, who else has she “entertained’? He turns to his little boy and asks a question every father has playfully asked his child: “Are you mine?” Only now Leontes’ innocent-sounding question has a very dark meaning lurking behind it.
In this next sequence the innocent little boy suddenly arouses his father’s suspicions. How does Leontes know the child is his? Who has told him in the past that Mamillius resembles him? Is there a conspiracy to trick and humiliate him?
MAMILLIUS: Ay,
my good lord.
LEONTES: I'
fecks [In faith]!
Why, that's my bawcock [fine boy]. What,
hast smutch'd thy nose?
They say it is a copy out of mine. Come,
captain,
We must be neat; not neat [horned
cattle], but cleanly, captain:
And yet the steer, the heifer and the calf
[a gullible animal]
Are all call'd neat.--Still virginalling
[as if playing keyboard]
Upon his palm!--How now, you wanton calf!
Art thou my calf?
MAMILLIUS: Yes, if you will, my
lord.
LEONTES: Thou want'st a rough pash [bulls head]
and the shoots [horns] that I
have,
To be full like me: yet they say we are
Almost as like as eggs; women say so,
That will say anything but were they false
As o'er-dyed blacks, as wind, as waters,
false
As dice are to be wish'd by one that fixes
No bourn [limit] 'twixt his and
mine, yet were it true
To say this boy were like me. Come, sir
page,
Look on me with your welkin [blue]
eye: sweet villain!
Most dear'st! my collop [flesh]! Can
thy dam [mother]?--may't be?
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:
Thou dost make possible things not so held,
Communicatest with dreams;--how can this
be?--
With what's unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very
credent
Thou mayst co-join with something; and thou
dost,
And that beyond commission, and I find it,
And that to the infection of my brains
And hardening of my brows.
The little boy responds innocently to his father’s loaded question, and Leontes reassures him as he cleans Mamillius’ nose, telling him We must be neat, as fathers have done since the dawn of time. But he is so sensitive to the notion of cuckoldry, even this little parental admonition becomes explosive, since neat is an old-fashioned word for horned beasts, like cuckolds. Leontes quickly corrects himself and changes neat into cleanly, but he cannot get rid of the image. As he descends into madness, we can see his condition reflected in his language, as in this super-sensitivity to words. We will also see the inner turmoil in the twisted syntax of his sentences, often reflected in interruptions in the flow of the sentence, as we see at lines 123, 134 and 145 above Then we will gain some sense of Leontes’ inner confusion by statements that seem to lose a sense of meaning in confusion. Finally his language will often use vague, general abstractions before suddenly and dramatically shifting to blunt expressions of physical grossness, as we see at lines 139 – 146. The idea of neat suggests calf, and Leontes interrupts his interior monologue at line 126 to call his son “a calf.” As he observes his wife and friend talking and holding hands, he imagines the subtle play of their fingers, calling it viginalling, suggesting the action of playing a primitive piano called a “virginal.” He again asks Mamillius if the boy is his, but now at line 128 he decides, sarcastically, that his son would need a rough pash and shoots, a bull’s head and horns, the signs of a cuckold, to resemble his father. Obviously if Leontes says this in a way that Mamillius hears it, the little boy won’t understand the significance. But he again asserts that Mamillius must be his since they resemble each other. (Physical resemblance was vital in establishing paternity in the days before DNA and blood tests.) Then he realizes that the people who have in the past told him the boy was his were all women. Suddenly he suspects a conspiracy – women, like Hermione, who will say anything but the truth, have all conspired to hide the truth from him. And yet the unmistakable reality of his son’s resemblance to him cannot be denied. Women may be as false as used clothes whose threadbare condition was hidden by dying them black. They may be as false as the unpredictable winds and the tricky tides. They may be as immoral as a gambler with trick dice who just wants to take your money. Yet Leontes cannot escape his son’s connection to him. For a moment he is overwhelmed with affection for his blue-eyed boy at lines 135-137, but then he suddenly thinks about the boy’s mother, whom he calls a dam, a word used to describe a female animal, almost as if the process of dehumanizing his wife has begun, as he wonders how it is possible that she could be an adulteress.
This brings us to lines 138 – 146, what is called “the affection speech.” The great Shakespearean scholar Mark Van Doren has called this speech “the obscurest passage in Shakespeare.” It is difficult to understand precisely because it is meant to mirror the incoherence of Leontes’ mind. You can get a sense of what he is saying in the paraphrase in the footnote at the bottom of page 11. Notice that even in this challenging sequence Leontes can’t utter a direct sentence without interrupting himself at line 140: “how can this be?” as if he is questioning the very idea he is seeking to express. Notice also that at the end of this statement filled with abstractions like affection, intention, something and commission, Leontes relies upon a very concrete and immediate image, the hardening of my brows: the horns that are beginning to grow out of his forehead.
In the next sequence Leontes must interact with Polixenes and Hermione. Does he express his suspicions to them, and if so how? Do they pick up on what is bothering him? Once he sends them away, Leontes will give way to an even more powerful statement of his physical disgust and mental turmoil. [Act I, scene 2, lines 146 – 208]
Polixenes and Hermione both recognize that something is bothering Leontes and ask him if he is “moved” or emotionally upset by anything. Here, beginning at line 150, we discover that Leontes reaction to his madness is to hide it, at least for the moment:
No, in good earnest.
How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines
Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,
As ornaments oft do, too dangerous:
How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend,
Will you take eggs for money [allow yourself to be imposed
upon]?
Leontes apologizes for looking distracted and says his concern has betrayed itself to others. Lying to cover himself, he says that concern comes from looking at his little son and remembering himself at that age. That childhood memory of innocence that Polixenes shared is for Leontes a time of danger and threat, a little boy playing with a dagger that could have hurt him. Perhaps it is the thought of violence against his friend and wife which will soon surface that makes Leontes think of this. And perhaps his own sense of outrage makes him ask Mamillius if he would accept an insult without fighting back.
The little boy says he would not take eggs for money, that he would fight, and his father approves. Leontes then asks Polixenes if he is as fond of his little boy at home as Leontes seems to be of his. (It’s interesting that Leontes is very wary about revealing his real feelings; he even suggests here that he is reserving judgment about whether or not the boy is his.) At line 165 Polixenes answers in a direct, emotionally authentic way about what his son means to him:
If at home, sir,
He's all my exercise [pastime], my mirth, my matter,
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness [ever changing innocence] cures
in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood [make me give way to
melancholy].
This heart-felt description of the innocence of youth sounds a lot like Polixenes’ account of his own childhood when he and Leontes were twin lambs. And he explains how just the presence of his little boy makes him a better person, helps him avoid the kind of emotional depressions that Leontes suffers from now. If only the king of Sicilia could tap into that same kind of healthy childlike innocence, he might be able to escape his jealous madness, but he is thinking of little boys with daggers! It will take a lot of suffering and death before Leontes can be redeemed by the innocence of youth through the intervention of his daughter, Perdita.
Instead of heeding the message implicit in Polixenes’ description, Leontes continues his pattern of deception of his wife and his friend. In this next sequence, beginning at line 171, notice how many times Leontes uses a kind of verbal deception with double meanings. What do you think he means when he says he is “angling”?
LEONTES: So
stands this squire
Officed with me [I feel the same way]:
we two will walk, my lord,
And leave you to your graver
[solemn] steps. Hermione,
How thou lovest us, show in our brother's
welcome;
Let what is dear [expensive] in
Sicily be cheap:
Next to thyself and my young rover, he's
Apparent to my heart.
HERMIONE: If you would
seek us,
We are yours i' the garden: shall's attend
you there?
LEONTES: To your own bents dispose you: you'll be
found,
Be you beneath the sky. [Aside] I am
angling now,
Though you perceive me not how I give line.
Go to, go to!
How she holds up the neb, the bill to
him [her face]!
And arms her [behaves] with
the boldness of a wife
To her allowing [approving] husband!
Much of Leontes speech here is filled with irony, that is saying one thing but meaning another. Only the audience is aware of the double meaning. Leontes seems determined to provoke his wife’s infidelity, as if he must see her betrayal for himself. He sends them off into the garden, telling his wife and friend he will leave them to their graver steps, when he knows what they will do when alone is hardly solemn. He orders Hermione to be hospitable to Polixenes at line 175, but we can hear the implied insult of cheap. And when he says about his friend that he is apparent to my heart, he seems to be saying that he is, after Hermione and Mamillius, the heir apparent of his affection, but what he really means is that Leontes knows in his heart the truth about his friend. When Hermione says they will expect him to join them in the garden, her husband says darkly, “Do what you want“ (Be as your bents dispose you) and adds that he will find them, that is finding out what they’re doing wherever they are. Leontes tells us he is angling, that is fishing, trying to catch his adulterous wife and her lover by allowing them to be alone. As they move off at his direction, Leontes imagines that his wife is holding up her face to be kissed (Neb or bill are images associated with a duck or goose, one more example of Leontes’ unconscious process of dehumanizing his wife.) He sees in her taking Polixenes’ arm the gesture of a woman who thinks of him as her husband, rather than the actions of a woman nine months pregnant who needs help walking around.
This next sequence beginning at line 185 is one of the most remarkable soliloquies in all of Shakespeare’s plays. In it we will see the four methods introduced earlier showing Leontes’ inner turmoil by verbal techniques: 1.) sensitivity to words; 2.) twisted syntax with interruptions of sentence flow; 3.) confusion of meaning; 4.) sudden and dramatic shifts from the abstract to the physically gross.
Gone
already!
Inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one!
Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave; contempt and clamor
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now,
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbor, by
Sir Smile, his neighbor: nay, there's comfort in't,
Whiles other men have gates, and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for 't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south. Be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly. Know 't;
It will let in and out the enemy,
With bag and baggage. Many thousand on 's
Have the disease, and feel't not.
At line 185 Leontes had ordered Hermione and Polixenes to leave him, and they complied with his request, but he uses this obedience as evidence that they cannot wait to be alone. In the next line Leontes imagines himself wading in some kind of dirty pond of cuckoldry, the whole process taking place within a single line: at first he is just barely in the contagious mess, inch-thick; then he is knee-deep; the very next step he is in over his head and ears, but as soon as he visualizes his head, he quickly adds the horns which have grown so fully they are now forked, the mark of maturity in a stag. He suddenly switches his attention back to Mamillius who is apparently listening to his father’s ranting without comprehension, and tells the boy to go play. He is sensitive to the implications of that word and interrupts himself to add, “thy mother plays,” obviously in a different sense than a child’s playing. Then another play on words – Leontes too plays, now in the sense of a part in the absurd drama of the cuckold. He is the hapless victim who is the laughingstock of the whole farce. He is the character the audience will hiss off the stage and into his grave, especially when he is faced with the issue which can mean the outcome of the play but also the offspring of the affair who will be presented to the clueless husband as if it were his own child. This idea of unwittingly raising another’s child is what ties the idea of cuckoldry to the cuckoo bird. The cuckoo, according to folklore, lays its eggs in the nests of other birds so that they will raise the cuckoo young, which will eventually grow so large they will crowd the other baby birds out of the nest. He repeats his admonition to go play at line190 and speculates on how other men handle his dilemma. He imagines there is a huge fellowship of cuckolds, men who hold their wives without realizing they have been sluiced by the neighbors. Sluiced is one of those sudden, dramatic descents into physical grossness; the word literally means “hosed out.” Leontes gives an identity to this ubiquitous adulterer who lives next door – Sir Smile. (An earlier generation in this country called this figure “the iceman” or “Joe, the grinder” referring to tradesmen who would make deliveries to the home.) Sir Smile will enter your gate, will sluice your wife, and will fish in your private pond, smiling as he watches you leave for work. Notice how these double entendres about adulterous copulation are all rather homey and somewhat comic; Leontes sees himself as a ridiculous figure. The idea that there are many such cuckolds gives Leontes some comfort, since he is not alone. In fact, if all husbands who were cuckolded (had revolted wives) would give way to despair, a powerful spiritual condition where a person loses all hope, and would kill themselves, a tenth of mankind would hang themselves. Some scholars believe that what he is saying here is that not 10% but 90% of men would commit suicide. This theme of the universality of wives betraying their husbands is found Shakespeare’s Othello and Cymbeline where men who mistakenly believe themselves to be cuckolds project their condition upon all of mankind. Leontes’ statement is perhaps the most powerful of these because he says, at lines 200 – 202, that the very nature of Earth makes it happen. The people at this time believed that different planets influenced human existence, so Leontes makes our planet the source of bawdiness, sexual promiscuity. We can hardly escape it and there is no treatment, or physic, for it. His communications become confused as he envisions what seems to be this planetary contagion suddenly attacking from every direction. Sex has become a kind of abstraction of astrophysics. At line 204 Leontes suddenly goes from discussing the generality of planetary influence on human behavior to this really gross, concrete image: Be it concluded: / No barricado for a belly. A barricado is Italian for a barricade to keep out an attacker. He reinforces this image with the following powerful assertion: It will let in and out the enemy, / With bag and baggage. The image is at once suggestive of the sexual act with its in and out; it identifies the hostility of the act by identifying the adulterer as the enemy; and its exaggeration makes the whole thing slightly ridiculous because it’s not just the enemy, it’s his bag and baggage as well. He concludes by calling his condition a disease, one that many men suffer from although they, unlike Leontes, have no idea they are infected. There’s the implication here that at least Leontes is better off than other cuckolds because he knows the “truth.”
Leontes will finally send his son away, but not before the confused little boy reassures his father at line 208, “I am like you, they say.” The fact that Leontes has poured out all this venomous hatred and sexual turmoil in front of his innocent child makes the effect all the more startling when you see it on stage. Mamillius has heard and understands something is wrong! Leontes finally reassures his son by telling him he is “an honest man,” and calls in Camillo, his trusted senior advisor we had met back in the opening scene. Leontes will now share his suspicions, his insane delusions, with someone who is capable of understanding what he is saying. How long does it take Camillo to get the point?
[Act I, scene 2, lines 212 – 278]
LEONTES: Camillo, this great sir
will yet stay longer.
CAMILLO: You had much ado to make his anchor hold:
When you cast out, it still came home.
LEONTES: Didst note
it?
CAMILLO: He would not stay at your petitions: made
His business more material.
LEONTES: Didst
perceive it?
[Aside] They're here with me
already, whispering, rounding
'Sicilia is a so-forth:' 'tis far gone,
When I shall gust [realize] it last.
How came't, Camillo,
That he did stay?
CAMILLO: At the good queen's
entreaty.
LEONTES: “At the queen's” be 't. “Good” should be
pertinent
But, so it is, it is not. Was this taken
By any understanding pate but thine?
For thy conceit [imagination] is
soaking, will draw in
More than the common blocks. Not noted, is 't,
But of the finer natures? By some severals
[individuals]
Of head-piece extraordinary? Lower messes
Perchance are to this business purblind? Say.
I had made the point that Mamillius must have been baffled by his father’s strange outburst. Camillo, older, wiser, doesn’t have much better luck. Leontes assumes right from the beginning that Camillo must have seen the same evidence he has, must have reached the same warped conclusion. Camillo assumes Leontes is pleased that his friend has agreed to stay longer and sees no sinister intent. At line 217 Leontes reveals one of the hallmarks of the cuckold – the fear of public humiliation. Just as he imagined his wife having sex with Polixenes, he now imagines people gossiping behind his back, calling him a so-forth and probably making the sign of the cuckold, holding one’s index and little finger up to signify those damned horns. He asks Camillo at line 219 why exactly Polixenes changed his mind and his advisor answers, “At the good queen’s entreaty.” Leontes seizes on that word good, telling Camillo just to say “the queen” and skip the “good.’ He adds in a confused twist of logic that “Good should be pertinent/ But as it is, it is not.” Now we understand he means that as things are, his queen is hardly good; Camillo just hears gobbledy-gook. He confronts Camillo at line 222 to tell him how many people in the court have guessed the truth. He knows that Camillo has because his conceit, or intelligence, is soaking, that is, soaks up the truth. Maybe the awareness of his plight is known only to the more intelligent courtiers, the headpieces extraordinary, since courtly gentlemen were often distinguished by their elaborate hats. Those who sat in the dining hall below the raised platform which held the monarch and his closest advisors, those Leontes calls the lower messes or common blocks, as in “blockheads.”
In the next sequence Leontes becomes increasingly angry with what he sees as Camillo’s willful refusal to acknowledge what he knows the courtier must have seen. How many times does Leontes express frustration at Camillo’s answers? To what does he attribute his advisor’s apparent reluctance to admit the truth? We begin at line 229 with Camillo reacting to Leontes’ question about some people being blind to “this business.”
CAMILLO: Business, my lord! I think
most understand
Bohemia stays here longer.
LEONTES Ha!
CAMILLO: Stays
here longer.
LEONTES: Ay, but why?
CAMILLO: To satisfy your highness and the entreaties
Of our most gracious mistress.
LEONTES: Satisfy!
The entreaties of your mistress! Satisfy!
Let that suffice. I have trusted thee,
Camillo,
With all the nearest things to my heart, as
well
My chamber-councils [secret
confessions] wherein, priest-like, thou
Hast cleansed my bosom, I from thee
departed
Thy penitent reform'd. But we have been
Deceived in thy integrity, deceived
In that which seems so [appears to
be so].
CAMILLO: Be it
forbid, my lord!
LEONTES: To bide [insist] upon 't, thou art not
honest, or,
If thou inclinest that way, thou art a
coward,
Which hoxes [hamstrings] honesty
behind, restraining
From course required. Or else thou must be
counted
A servant grafted in my serious trust
And therein negligent. Or else a fool
That seest a game play'd home, the rich
stake drawn [played for keeps
for a valuable prize],
And takest it all for jest.
Camillo has no idea what Leontes is talking about when he refers to “business.” He states that what people know is simply that Polixenes will stay longer. At line 230 Leontes expressed his frustration the first time by simply saying “Ha!” Puzzled by his monarch’s reaction, Camillo thinks he didn’t hear, so he repeats, “Stays here longer” and earns Leontes’ second frustrated query, “Ay, but why?” The courtier states what was apparent to everyone who heard the earlier exchange: he is staying because Leontes and then Hermione asked him to. Unfortunately, he says Polixenes changed his mind to satisfy his hosts, and Leontes responds with his third outburst of frustration, a rant about satisfy and his mistress. We understand that he us using satisfy in a sexual sense about Hermione, but Camillo has no more idea what he is talking about than Mamillius did. At line 240 he finally articulates his frustration to Camillo in direct language without explaining why he is frustrated: Deceived in thy integrity. In his final speech, lines 242 – 249 Leontes expresses his frustration for the fifth time and accuses Camillo of having disappointed him for one of four very serious reasons:
1.) Dishonesty – “Thou art not honest” at line 242
2.) Cowardice – “thou art a coward” at line 243
3.) Negligence – “a servant, grafted in my serious service” at line 246
4.) Foolishness – “That sees a serious game ….and tak’st it all for jest” at 248-249
In his long response to these charges at lines 249 – 267 Camillo reveals some aspects of Leontes’ character that help us understand his interaction with his subordinates from this point on. Camillo is neither dishonest, cowardly, negligent nor foolish, but he begins his answer by accepting these charges as possibly valid! He may have been “negligent, foolish or fearful,” but he has always tried to do his best. If he has ever been guilty of any dereliction of his duty, it was never because he did not take his responsibility seriously. It is not until line 265 that he finally asks Leontes to be more specific about his dissatisfaction with his chief advisor. Camillo’s careful answer suggests that an employee would contradict Leontes at peril of his job, if not his life!
Finally at line 267 Leontes must articulate to another grown-up this insane fantasy which has seized him for the last 160 lines. The burden of articulating this “reality” is so great, Leontes’ inner turmoil almost overwhelms his ability to speak coherently:
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 rumor
Cannot be mute,--or thought,--for cogitation
Resides not in that 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, then say
My wife's a hobby-horse, deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench that puts to
Before her troth-plight: say't and justify't.
What Leontes wants to say in the first seven lines here is simply, “Have you not seen, or heard, or thought my wife is slippery,” a total of 12 words. But what he utters is 49 words long, a rambling statement that is interrupted five times, as if Leontes’ thought process is so burdened that he keeps thinking of new things to add. All the interruptions are, in one way or another, a denial that Camillo could even consider Leontes’ charges wrong in any way. Has he ever seen – but of course he’s seen unless his eyeglasses were made of the horns that cuckolds wear. Has he not heard – but he must have heard because it was so outrageous and obvious that rumor, the personification of a tell-all rumor-monger could never keep quiet. Has he not thought – but of course he has thought if he has any mental capacity (cognition) at all. The climax for all these interrupted and twisted questions is that sudden, dramatic descent to the physical disgusting in the concrete image of slippery. He challenges Camillo to deny the obvious and comes back for a second dramatic sexual image – his wife is a hobby horse, a slang term for a “loose woman,” which conjures up the vision of sexual movement. He follows this up with the assertion that his wife is no better than a flax-wench, a woman who worked gathering flax for making cloth and had the reputation for being so promiscuous that she would engage in sex before she was even engaged to be married (before her troth-plight). He demands that Camillo agree with his accusation.
At lines 279 – 284 Camillo adamantly denies this horrible charge could be true. He says he would have fought anyone else who would utter such a slander and chastises his master for even thinking such a thing. In fact the lie is so terrible it is as sinful to repeat it as the alleged sin of adultery itself. Leontes is the one challenged to justify his fantasy, which he does at lines 284 – 296:
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career [gallop]
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 [cataracts] 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.
Leontes asks twelve rhetorical questions here, questions that he believes are so obvious they cannot be ignored. The physical “evidence” behind these questions, the nine sexual provocations he accuses his wife and friend of having committed as preludes to the sexual act itself, exist only in his imagination: whispering, touching cheeks and noses, kissing with the inside lip (a French kiss), trying to stop a salacious laugh, as if it were a run-away horse at full gallop (and here he interrupts himself to assure Camillo that is infallible proof that they’re guilty); playing with each others’ feet under the table (what he calls horsing to continue the equestrian imagery); trying to sneak off into corners; wishing that time would go faster so they can be alone together; and wanting everyone else to be blind, as with cataracts, so they can be unseen in their wickedness. If these things are nothing, are not what they appear to be, then is the whole world nothing. Leontes is obsessing on a single word, as we have seen him do throughout his madness. The irony is, of course, that the “reality” he sees is nothing, and he will have to live through the consequences of that terrible negation. In some ways this idea of questioning the reality of our lives is a theme common to all of Shakespeare’s romances. All the protagonists seek to impose their own flawed visions of the world on those around them and must be redeemed from their mistakes.
We have already seen how difficult it would be to try and tell Leontes that he is wrong. Nevertheless, at line 296 Camillo tries again to sway Leontes. But the monarch is determined, and now he puts his advisor in a terrible position. What is it that he demands Camillo do?
CAMILLO: Good my lord,
be cured
Of this diseased opinion, and betimes [quickly];
For 'tis most dangerous.
LEONTES: Say it be, ‘tis true.
CAMILLO: No, no, my lord.
LEONTES: It is; you lie, you
lie.
I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering [vacillating] temporizer, that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both. Were my wife's liver
Infected as her life, she would not live
The running of one glass [hour glass].
CAMILLO: Who does infect her?
LEONTES : Why, he that wears her like a medal, hanging
About his neck, Bohemia, who, if I
Had servants true about me, that bare eyes
To see alike mine honor as their profits,
Their own particular thrifts, they would do that
Which should undo more doing. Ay, and thou,
His cupbearer, whom I from meaner form
Have benched and reared to worship, who mayst see
Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,
How I am galled, mightst bespice a cup,
To give mine enemy a lasting wink;
Which draught to me were cordial.
The key to understanding Camillo’s response to this personal and potentially
public crisis is found in his first comments at line 295 – 297: Leontes’ opinion
is diseased and therefore dangerous. His imagined version of
reality is sick and if allowed to remain will prove dangerous to the whole
country. When you lived in a kingdom with one-man rule, and your one man is a
lunatic, the whole society was at risk. That public danger is what motivates
Camillo from this point on. Leontes once again threatens Camillo to agree,
accusing him of lying and being a lout, a slave or someone plays
games with the truth. His observation at line 304 is probably a mistake by the
printer; it makes more sense for Leontes to say, “Were my wife’s life/
Infected as her liver [seat of sexual passion], she would not live/ The
running of one glass.” Camillo has no idea who Hermione could be having an
affair with, and Leontes angrily describes the King of Bohemia as wearing her
around his neck, like a miniature portrait lovers used to exchange. Now at
line 308 he requests, indirectly, that Camillo take action. He begins by
saying that a good servant, who was looking out for his master’s interest as
well as a possible reward or profits would have found an occasion to rid
him of this problem. He reminds Camillo that he has elevated him socially (benched
and reared to worship) and made him a royal cupbearer, a position of
enormous trust. He suggest that Camillo bespice a cup for
Polixenes, a euphemism for poisoning that will give his friend a lasting
wink (death) which Leontes will consider a beneficial medicine or cordial.
It’s very interesting to see the King of Sicilia tiptoeing around actually
calling for murder. It is as if he can lessen the outrage of the suggestion by
softening the language.
Camillo responds by saying he could commit this murder and hide the fact that it is poison, but he again denies that Hermione could be guilt of adultery. Notice how Leontes now justifies his suspicions, beginning at line 325:
Make that thy question, and go rot!
Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
To 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' the prince, my son,
Who I do think is mine, and love as mine,
Without ripe moving to 't [adequate reason for it]? Would I
do this?
Could man so blench [swerve]?
If Camillo insists on defending Hermione, Leontes in effect tells him to go to hell. He asks one of those long rhetorical questions similar to those he has used before, a question which Leontes believes can only be answered one way. Would he willingly have destroyed his love and peace of mind if he did not have sufficient reasons? Not only has it ruined the purity of his marriage bed, it has made him question of parentage of his own son. That is the development which undoubtedly rouses Camillo to make the offer that follows at line 334:
CAMILLO : I must believe
you, sir:
I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for 't:
Provided that, when he's removed, your
highness
Will take again your queen as yours at
first,
Even for your son's sake; and thereby for
sealing
The injury of tongues, in courts and
kingdoms
Known and allied to yours.
LEONTES: Thou dost
advise me
Even so as I mine own course have set down.
I'll give no blemish to her honor, none.
Camillo apparently agrees to murder Polixenes; I say apparently because no one ever uses the word “murder” but rather euphemisms and indirect suggestions. He says only he will fetch off the King of Bohemia; Leontes assumes that means he will kill his friend, but Camillo doesn’t exactly do that, although he does get Polixenes out of the way. However, he has a condition: Leontes must be reconciled with his wife and most importantly must not raise any doubts about Mamillius’ legitimacy. What Camillo is attempting to do is to save the kingdom from a potential damaging conflict. Whenever there was any question about who the legitimate successor should be, kingdoms were often racked by terrible civil wars among competing claimants called pretenders. Rather than risk the fate of his country, Camillo will go along with Leontes’ mad fantasy, at least to get Polixenes out of harm’s way. The courtier tells Leontes to act as if everything were all right to allay any suspicions. Leontes agrees to the arrangement but warns his servant at line 349 that if he doesn’t do the deed, the king will split his heart.
Once Leontes leaves, Camillo tells us beginning at line 352 about the dilemma he finds himself in and what he intends to do about it:
O miserable lady! But, for me,
What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner
Of good Polixenes; and my ground to do 't
Is the obedience to a master, one
Who in rebellion with himself will have
All that are his so too. To do this deed,
Promotion follows. If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish'd after, I 'ld not do 't. But since
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one,
Let villainy itself forswear 't. I must
Forsake the court. To do 't, or no, is certain
To me a break-neck. Happy star, reign now!
Camillo begins by sympathizing with Hermione but quickly switches to concern about his own safety. He must poison Polixenes because his king is in a state of rebellion with himself, that is he has forsaken his real self and now uses his political power to forces all his subjects into the same rebellion against their better natures. If he commits the murder, Leontes has promised reward. However, Camillo knows that history shows those who strike an anointed king always end badly. Even if he was naturally villainous, this record would make him break his promise to Leontes for self-protection. But if he doesn’t kill Polixenes he will also risk punishment, make himself a break-neck. He asks for help from Fate or Fortune, which was usually associated with one’s lucky star.
Polixenes enters at line 364 having just encountered Leontes who rushed by him angrily without saying a word. Polixenes senses something is wrong, and he asks Camillo what the problem is. At line 377 Camillo has an interesting answer: “I dare not know, my lord.” Notice how Polixenes fastens on the implications of that phrase I dare not know in his long speech at line 378:
How, dare not? Do not? Do you know, and dare
not?
Be intelligent to me. 'Tis thereabouts;
For to yourself, what you do know, you must.
And cannot say, you dare not. Good Camillo,
Your changed complexions are to me a mirror,
Which shows me mine changed too; for I must be
A party in this alteration, finding
Myself thus alter'd with 't.
Back at line 45 in this scene Hermione had picked up on the apparently innocent word verily. Here Polixenes sees the implications in I dare not know. He analyzes what Camillo could mean, guessing that the advisor does know but is afraid to tell him. There’s an explanation in the lengthy footnote for lines 378 – 381. As much as the indirect message of the ambiguous words, Polixenes guesses that something is terribly wrong from the look on Camillo’s face, his changed complexions, and knows it must involve him. Over the next 27 lines, beginning at line 385, Polixenes urges and Camillo resists telling but lets out small hints that enflame the king’s desire to find the truth:
CAMILLO: There
is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
I cannot name the disease; and it is caught
Of you that yet are well.
POLIXENES: How caught
of me?
Make me not sighted like the basilisk.
I have look'd on thousands, who have sped
the better
By my regard, but kill'd none so. Camillo,
As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto
Clerk-like experienced, which no less
adorns
Our gentry than our parents' noble names,
In whose success we are gentle: I beseech
you,
If you know aught which does behove my
knowledge
Thereof to be inform'd, imprison 't not
In ignorant concealment.
CAMILLO: I may not
answer.
POLIXENES: A sickness caught of me, and yet I well?
I must be answer'd. Dost thou hear,
Camillo,
I conjure thee, by all the parts of man,
Which honor does acknowledge, whereof the
least
Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare
What incidency [threat] thou dost
guess of harm
Is creeping toward me; how far off, how
near;
Which way to be prevented, if to be;
If not, how best to bear it.
CAMILLO: Sir, I
will tell you;
Since I am charged in honor and by him
That I think honorable. Therefore mark my
counsel,
Which must be even as swiftly follow'd as
I mean to utter it; or both yourself and me
Cry lost, and so good night!
Camillo’s first response is that there is a sickness which has been caught from Polixenes who is yet not sick himself. This is intriguing enough to spur the king on to know more, which may well have been Camillo’s purpose. The truth is so unbelievable that it may be that the courtier wants Polixenes to drag it out of him a little at a time, to emphasize its seriousness. Polixenes wonders what this disease might be, since he is not a mythical monster, a basilisk, that could kill by just looking at people. At line 392 he flatters Camillo by reminding him he is a gentleman on two important bases: he is educated, clerklike experienced, as well as the successor of a family which was gentle or well-bred. As such he is honor-bound to tell Polixenes if he needs to know. Camillo says provocatively that he may not answer, which just arouses Bohemia’s interest even more. He conjures Camillo by all the parts of man, that is all the obligations of honor which an upper-class gentleman was bound by, to tell him what is wrong and what danger is approaching. Finally at line 407 Camillo agrees to tell him but warns him that as soon as he has learned the truth, he must act or they both will bid good night, that is will die.
On this ominous note the advisor reveals first that he has been ordered to murder the king. Then he tells Polixenes why, that Leontes swears he knows the truth as if he had seen it or vice you to it, that is forced you to commit the adultery, touched his queen forbiddenly. In case we were in any doubt about the real nature of the relationship between Polixenes and Hermione Bohemia’s heart-felt response at line 418 should make it clear it is entirely innocent:
O, then my best blood turn
To an infected jelly and my name
Be yoked with his that did betray the Best!
Turn then my freshest reputation to
A savor that may strike the dullest nostril
Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn'd,
Nay, hated too, worse than the great'st infection
That e'er was heard or read!
Polixenes uses four very powerful hyperboles to convince Camillo and us that he is totally innocent of any such crime. First, if he were guilty, he wishes his blood would be turned to infected jelly. If he were guilty, he wants his name to be linked with that of Judas, who betrayed Christ, the Best. (This is just one of many anachronisms in this play that is supposedly set in a pre-Christian time of the ancient Greeks.) If he is guilty he says his reputation, the most important thing a nobleman had, should be made into an odor, a savor, that would sicken people whenever he came around. Finally if he is guilty his mere presence will be worse that the greatest sickness, probably the bubonic plague.
Camillo, at lines 425 – 432, assures Polixenes that it is useless to try and reason with Leontes’ mad obsession, his folly, which will last as long as his body is alive and standing. He tells the king he does not know how Leontes came to be so infected and urges him to slip away that night. Camillo will alert Polixenes’ followers and help them leave the city in small groups through different gates of the city since he has the keys. Finally he places himself under the king’s protection since he must flee Sicilia as well. Polixenes welcomes Camillo’s service and agrees to escape Leontes’ wrath that night. Then at the end of their desperate planning, Polixenes pauses for a moment to wonder about Hermione’s fate at line 452:
This jealousy
Is for a precious creature. As she's rare,
Must it be great, and as his person's mighty,
Must it be violent, and as he does conceive
He is dishonor’s by a man which ever
Profess'd to him, why, his revenges must
In that be made more bitter. Fear o'ershades me.
Good expedition be my friend, and comfort
The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing
Of his ill-ta'en suspicion! Come, Camillo;
I will respect thee as a father if
Thou bear'st my life off hence. Let us avoid.
He guesses that Leontes’ anger must be great since his wife is so precious and rare, just as his rage is greater because he believes he has been dishonor’d by a good friend. At line 459 following he seems to hope that his leaving will somehow comfort the gracious queen, although how exactly that is going to happen is unclear. The fact is that Polixenes and Camillo leave Hermione without warning her or offering to help in some way.
Act II, Scene 1
Act II moves quickly towards a dramatic climax as Leontes has his wife arrested and imprisoned. With Camillo having warned Polixenes and fled, Leontes starts to see conspiracies all around him and his madness grows more desperate. Two new characters appear to heroically attempt to dissuade Leontes from his insane destructive course – a husband and wife, Antigonus and Paulina. She will attempt to change Leontes’ mind by confronting him with his new-born daughter, whose very existence hastens Leontes’ descent into madness. The first scene opens with a brief respite from Leontes’ woes as we see little Mamillius interact playfully with his mother and her attendants. He mocks women’s use of cosmetics and then starts to tell his mother a tale of “sprites and goblins,” a winter’s tale. [Act II, scene 2]
Leontes enters, having just learned of Camillo’s flight with Polixenes. His long speech at line 36 is a jumble of mixed emotions:
How blest am I
In my just censure, in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! How accursed
In being so blest! There may be in the cup
A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected. But if one present
The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
Camillo was his help in this, his pander.
There is a plot against my life, my crown;
All's true that is mistrusted; that false villain
Whom I employ'd was pre-employ'd by him;
He has discover'd my design, and I
Remain a pinch'd thing; yea, a very trick
For them to play at will.
The conflicting emotions Leontes feels are caught in the first four lines: he is both blest because he knows the truth that most men, those with lesser knowledge; and he is accursed in being so blest. Leontes then gives us a perfect analogy of the burden of his knowing – the spider in a cup which only poisons when it is seen after one drinks. He concludes with the powerful statement I have drunk, and seen the spider. This is one of the most powerful images in the play. Leontes uses Camillo’s flight as evidence of a far wider conspiracy: Camillo knew of Polixenes’ adultery and helped him, served as his pander. If this is true, then there is probably a plot to kill him and take his crown! At line 48 he declares, All’s true that is mistrusted. What bothers him most is that Camillo was a spy for Polixenes all these years, and now the two of them feel superior to him, leaving him frustrated, a pinched thing.
Leontes now brutally takes Mamillius from his mother. Notice how Hermione in this next exchange reacts to his husband’s sudden change in behavior, beginning at line 56:
LEONTES: Give me the boy. I am glad
you did not nurse him.
Though he does bear some signs of me, yet
you
Have too much blood in him.
HERMIONE: What is
this? Sport?
LEONTES: Bear the boy hence; he shall not come about
her; [exit Mamillius]
Away with him! and let her sport herself
With that she's big with; for 'tis
Polixenes
Has made thee swell thus.
HERMIONE: But I'd say
he had not,
And I'll be sworn you would believe my
saying,
Howe'er you lean to th’ nayward.
This is the first inkling that Hermione has of her husband’s suspicions. (By the way, noble women often did not nurse their infants, turning that task over to “wet nurses,” lower-class women who were considered fit for such animal-like activities.) Her first reaction to his accusation is that he’s kidding, in sport. When he makes his accusation explicit and accuses her of carrying Polixenes’ child, she very regally denies it and says she knows he will accept her word, regardless of what he might think.
At line 64 Leontes continues to press his accusation. One of the things that make it even worse is that he is insisting on dirtying all this dirty linen in public, in front of all the members of the court:
You, my lords,
Look on her, mark her well; be but about
To say “She is a goodly lady,” and
The justice of your hearts will thereto add
“Tis pity she's not honest, honorable”;
Praise her but for this her without-door form,
Which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight
The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands
That calumny doth use--O, I am out!--
That mercy does, for calumny will sear
Virtue itself -- these shrugs, these hum’s and ha's,
When you have said she's goodly, come between,
Ere you can say she's honest. But be 't known,
From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,
She's an adulteress.
We see the verbal symptoms of inner turmoil here. Leontes obsesses on the word goodly, praising his wife for her appearance, her without-door form, but announcing to all that she is an adulteress in the dramatic end of the speech. Notice how at line 72 Leontes becomes so confused in his emotional outburst that he loses his thought and irritably says, “O, I am out!” He is imagining the petty brands or signs that people use to communicate the unspoken truth, these shrugs, these hum’s and ha’s. He knows that everyone there knows the truth about his wife, whom he brands so dramatically at the end of the speech.
Hermione’s responses become more measured and dignified as Leontes’ attacks become more virulent in the exchange from line 78 on:
HERMIONE: Should
a villain say so,
The most replenish'd [perfect]
villain in the world,
He were as much more villain. You, my lord,
Do but mistake.
LEONTES: You have mistook, my
lady,
Polixenes for Leontes. O thou thing,
Which I'll not call a creature of thy place
[social rank],
Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,
Should a like language use to all degrees
[classes]
And mannerly distinguishment [distinction]
leave out
Betwixt the prince and beggar. I have said
She's an adulteress. I have said with whom.
More, she's a traitor, and Camillo is
A federary [confederate] with her,
and one that knows
What she should shame to know herself
But with her most vile principal
[immoral partner] -- that she's
A bed-swerver, even as bad as those
That vulgars give bold'st titles, ay, and
privy
To this their late escape.
HERMIONE: No, by my
life.
Privy to none of this. How will this grieve
you,
When you shall come to clearer knowledge,
that
You thus have publish'd me! Gentle my lord,
You scarce can right me thoroughly
[make amends] then to say
You did mistake.
LEONTES : No; if I
mistake
In those foundations [bases] which I
build upon,
The center [earth] is not big enough
to bear
A school-boy's top. Away with her to
prison!
He who shall speak for her is afar off [immediately]
guilty,
But that he speaks [if he just speaks].
Hermione denies this terrible slander or calumny and calmly declares that if a terrible villain had made this accusation, he would be all the more villainous; Leontes is just mistaken, not villainous. Leontes’ accusations become more strident. The mistake was hers, he counters. He cannot call her “queen” any more, since her sin is so terrible, it undermines the linguistic distinctions between social classes, so that the prince and beggar have become the same. He repeats his charges and says she is a traitor in league with Camillo. He calls her a bed-swerver or whatever gross terms vulgar people might want to use. Now Hermione says with a sense of sorrow that her husband will feel terrible when he realizes he has made a mistake, a mistake so awful he will be hard pressed to express his regret. At line 100 Leontes repeats his assertion that if he is wrong, then the reality of the world is wrong. He orders her taken off to prison and threatens that anyone who stands up for her or questions his actions will be held as guilty of the treason as well.
Hermione’s response beginning at line 105 is quite remarkable. What does she blame for her troubles? How does she defend herself? How do you explain Leontes’ reaction at line 115?
HERMIONE: There's some ill
planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable. Good my
lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want [lack] of
which vain dew [tears]
Perchance shall dry your pities. But I have
That honorable grief lodged here which
burns
Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my
lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your
charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The King's will be perform'd!
LEONTES: Shall
I be heard?
HERMIONE: Who is 't that goes with me? Beseech your Highness,
My women may be with me, for you see
My plight requires it. Do not weep, good
fools;
There is no cause; when you shall know your
mistress
Has deserved prison, then abound in tears,
As I come out: this action I now go on
Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord.
I never wish'd to see you sorry; now
I trust I shall. My women, come; you have
leave.
Hermione philosophically accepts what is happening to her, blaming planetary influence, much as Leontes had back at Act I, scene 2, line 200, but she offers this as an explanation for simply waiting for the truth to come out. She apologizes to the onlookers for not weeping, assuring them she has an honorable grief in her heart. She asks for their understanding and charitable consideration. She ends at line 115 with a remarkable statement: The king’s will be perform’d. She accepts Leontes’ judgment taking away Mamillius and sending her to prison. To us this seems a surrender to injustice; however, in a state where the king was God’s anointed representative on earth, if the monarch orders it, even if it is wrong, the proper response is to obey. There are accounts from that time of men going to execution, blessing the monarch who had condemned them with their final breath! (The Earl of Essex had done so to Queen Elizabeth just before he lost his head on her command!) Leontes’ reaction is the face of his wife’s dignified denial and acceptance is quite telling: he sees himself as being ignored by the members of the court at line 115. There is about Leontes a kind of emotional immaturity, like a six year-old having a tantrum. Hermione at line 116 changes the subject and asks which of her attendants will go to prison with her. She will need help with giving birth very soon. When her women weep, she chides them and tells them not to cry until they learn that she is really guilty of something. Now she makes another statement: the action she is undergoing, an unjust jailing, will make her a better person. She closes with an expression of sympathy for her husband, telling him she never wanted to see him sorry but trusts that he will regret his action in the future.
Now the conflict changes as Leontes is challenged by members of his court, in particular a senior advisor, Antigonus, who steps into the position Camillo had had in the last scene.
ANTIGONUS: Be certain what you do, sir,
lest your justice
Prove violence; in the which three great
ones suffer,
Yourself, your queen, your son.
FIRST LORD: For her, my
lord,
I dare my life lay down and will do 't,
sir,
Please you t’ accept it, that the queen is
spotless
I' th’ eyes of heaven, and to you -- I
mean,
In this, which you accuse her.
ANTIGONUS: If
it prove
She's otherwise, I'll keep my stables where
I lodge my wife; I'll go in couples with
her;
Than when I feel and see her no farther
trust her;
For every inch of woman in the world,
Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,
If she be.
Antigonus points out the same political ramifications of Leontes’ action which Camillo had: it does violence to the king, his queen and the heir to the throne; it is a major political scandal. A nameless Lord speaks up on Hermione’s behalf, despite Leontes’ threat to treat such dissent as treason, and offers to lay down his own life to prove her innocence – an act of real courage under the circumstances. Sensing the powerful hold Leontes’ infected imagination has on him, Antigonus tries shock therapy to shake the king’s insistence. Essentially he argues that if Hermione is guilty, then all women are suspect, even his own wife and daughters. If the queen is an adulteress, then he will lock his wife up in his stables where he keeps his horses safe. He will not allow her to go out unless he has a leash on her, go in couples with her. Furthermore, if Hermione is corrupt, then every woman, every tiny dram of their flesh is false. Unfortunately for Antigonus, his hyperbole of female corruption, rather than making Leontes reconsider his position, merely confirms his belief stated back at Act I, scene 2 at lines 130 and 199 that all women, or at least 90%, are corrupt.
Leontes tells his courtiers to hold their peace, but Antigonus persists in challenging the ruler who holds the power of life-and-death for him. At line 140 he tries a different tack:
ANTIGONUS: It is for you we speak, not
for ourselves.
You are abused and by some putter-on
[trouble-maker]
That will be damn'd for 't. Would I knew
the villain,
I would land-damn [beat severely]
him. Be she honor-flaw'd,
I have three daughters; the eldest is
eleven
The second and the third, nine, and some
five;
If this prove true, they'll pay for 't. By
mine honor,
I'll geld [neuter] 'em all; fourteen
they shall not see,
To bring false generations [bastard
children]. They are co-heirs,
And I had rather glib [sterilize]
myself than they
Should not produce fair issue
[legitimate children].
LEONTES: Cease;
no more.
You smell this business with a sense as
cold
As is a dead man's nose. But I do see 't
and feel 't,
As you feel doing thus; and see withal
The instruments that feel [his
fingers].
ANTIGONUS: If
it be so,
We need no grave to bury honesty.
There's not a grain of it the face to
sweeten
Of the whole dungy [corrupted with
dung] earth.
LEONTES: What! lack
I credit [credibility]?
Antigonus assures Leontes that their concern is largely for him. He now guesses that some evil person has put this lie in Leontes’ mind and wishes he knew who it was so he could land-damn, or beat, him. (In Othello there was a putter-on, the villain Iago who infected Othello’s mind, but Leontes has done this mischief all on his own.) Since his hyperbole about the corruption of women had not worked using his wife, Antigonus tries again using his three innocent daughters. If Hermione is guilty, he will make sure they never give birth; he will sterilize them, because they will obviously have bastards otherwise. In his frustration Leontes defends his decision and tells Antigonus that he alone sees and feels the truth. To illustrate his point he pinches or hits Antigonus and tells him that he sees and feels this blow with as much certainty as he knows his wife is guilty. Antigonus now tries another hyperbole, saying that if Leontes is right, there is no honesty on earth to sweeten the smell of corruption. The king’s response at line 157 is again the cry of a child – why won’t anyone believe me?
The nameless Lord again bravely stands up against Leontes’ injustice. Beginning at line 161, Leontes defends his actions. What are three different arguments that he uses?
LEONTES: Why,
what need we
Commune [consult] with you of this,
but rather follow
Our forceful instigation [powerful
impulses]? Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels, but our natural
goodness
Imparts this; which if you, or stupefied
[stupid]
Or seeming so [pretending to be
stupid] in skill, cannot or will not
Relish [recognize] a truth like us,
inform yourselves
We need no more of your advice. The matter,
The loss, the gain, the ordering on't, is
all
Properly ours.
ANTIGONUS: And I wish, my liege,
You had only in your silent judgment tried
it,
Without more overture [public
scrutiny].
LEONTES: How could
that be?
Either thou art most ignorant by age,
Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo's flight,
Added to their familiarity
[friendship] --
Which was as gross [obvious] as ever
touch'd conjecture,
That lack'd sight only, nought for approbation
[proof]
But only seeing, all other circumstances
Made up to the deed -- doth push on this
proceeding:
Yet, for a greater confirmation --
For in an act of this importance 'twere
Most piteous to be wild -- I have
dispatch'd in post [speed]
To sacred Delphos, to Apollo's temple,
Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
Of stuff'd sufficiency [credentials].
Now from the oracle
They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel
[answer] had,
Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?
As an absolute monarch, Leontes does not need the permission of his courtiers. Nor did he need to tell them why he was acting as he did, but because he’s a good guy, he has shared with them his reasons. If they are so stupid, stupefied, or more seriously, they are pretending, seeming, that they cannot see the obvious truth, he will discharge them. Anyway, he is the only one affected by the action, and he will answer for it. Antigonus points out that because he has been so public with his accusations, everyone in Sicilia knows about it now. He wishes that Leontes had been more discreet in his proceedings.
The king answers that it made no difference: the details, coupled with Camillo’s flight with Polixenes was so obvious that everyone guessed the truth. The only thing missing from the approbation, or proof, was actually seeing the adultery taking place. Notice that the flow of Leontes’ thought process, reflected by the sentence structure, is again interrupted with digressions and second thoughts at lines 175, 179, 180 and 182 – a sure sign he is under great emotional pressure. He has done only one thing which offers a way out of this terrible nightmare. He has sent two trusted courtiers to the Oracle of Delphos where Apollo, the God of Truth and Knowledge in ancient Greece, provided divine guidance to humans. Leontes assures his court at line 187 that he will be guided in his actions by the oracle’s answer.
In the final sequence in this scene, beginning at line 189, how does Leontes qualify his agreement to let Apollo decide Hermione’s guilt? Why does he claim he must proceed with her imprisonment and trial? What is Antigonus’ real reaction to his ruler’s plans?
LEONTES: Though I am satisfied and
need no more
Than what I know, yet shall the oracle
Give rest to the minds of others, such as he
[Antigonus]
Whose ignorant credulity will not
Come up to the truth. So have we thought it
good
From our free person she should be
confined,
Lest that the treachery of the two fled
hence
Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;
We are to speak in public; for this
business
Will raise us all.
ANTIGONUS: [Aside] To
laughter, as I take it,
If the good truth were known.
Antigonus begins back-pedaling on his pledge to abide by the oracle. He doesn’t need to learn the truth from Apollo; he has only sent to Delphos to satisfy those of his subjects, such as Antigonus, who might need reassurance. It’s a PR stunt! He has decided to jail Hermione because he fears that she may attempt to follow through on Polixenes and Camillo’s plot to murder him. He rushes off to make a public speech outlining all the details, saying that it will raise, or rouse, him. Antigonus, who sees the obvious folly of Leontes’ actions, tells us that it will indeed raise Leontes -- to public ridicule. We know how he feels about everything that’s happened.
Act II, Scene 2
This short scene introduces us to one of the plays most fascinating characters, Paulina, Antigonus’ wife. At line 6 she will storm into the prison and take custody of Hermione’s baby to use the child to confront Leontes with the error of his thought. Ask yourself, does this woman resemble the person her husband said he would lock up in the stable and put a leash on? [Act II, scene 2]
PAULINA: Pray
you then,
Conduct me to the queen.
JAILER: I may
not, madam:
To the contrary I have express commandment.
PAULINA: Here's ado, to lock up honesty and honor from
The access of gentle visitors! Is 't lawful,
pray you,
To see her women? Any of them? Emilia?
I pray now, call her……
JAILER: I shall bring Emilia forth…..And, madam,
I must be present at your conference.
PAULINA: Well, be 't so, prithee. [Exit Jailer]
Here's such ado to make no stain a stain
As passes coloring. [Re-enter JAILER,
with EMILIA]
Dear
gentlewoman,
How fares our gracious lady?
EMILIA: As well as one so great and so forlorn
May hold together. On her frights and griefs,
(Which never tender lady hath born greater,)
She is something before her time deliver'd.
PAULINA: A boy?
EMILIA: A daughter, and a goodly babe,
Lusty and like to live. The queen receives
Much comfort in 't; says “My poor prisoner,
I am innocent as you.”
PAULINA: I dare be
sworn
These dangerous unsafe lunes [lunacies]
i' the king, beshrew them!
He must be told on 't, and he shall. The office
[job]
Becomes a woman best. I'll take 't upon me.
If I prove honey-mouth'd [mild] let
my tongue blister
And never to my red-look'd anger be
The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia,
Commend my best obedience to the queen.
If she dares trust me with her little babe,
I'll show 't the king and undertake to be
Her advocate to the loud'st. We do not know
How he may soften at the sight o' the child.
The silence often of pure innocence
Persuades when speaking fails.
Does this no-nonsense woman seem like someone who will meekly allow her husband to control her life? She marches into the prison, demands to see the Queen, orders the Jailer around and comes up with a plan to cure Leontes of his dangerous lunes. She is one of the many independent, assertive women that Shakespeare created during his career – from Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.
At lines 18-19 she succinctly describes what is happening to Hermione: in his eagerness to stain his wife spotless reputation, Leontes is trying to discolor the fabric of her chaste life beyond the limits of the art of dyeing, passes coloring. (Ironically Leontes had said something similar about women hiding the truth being like the scam of dyeing worn clothes black to sell them as new, back in Act I, scene 2, line 131.) Because of the trauma of her ordeal, Hermione has delivered her baby early, a little daughter. Paulina’s plan is to take the baby and confront the king with her. (Notice at lines 32-34 she assumes the men of the court, including her husband, have been afraid to tell Leontes the truth; they have been honey-mouthed, which she promises she will not be.) Apparently she is well-known for her red-looked anger. Both Hermione and Paulina emphasize the idea of the infant’s innocence, and it is the innocence, the same kind of innocence Polixenes described back at the beginning of the play, that Paulina will use to soften the king’s heart and persuade him.
In the conclusion of this scene, beginning at line 41, notice how Paulina convinces the Jailer that the baby may be taken from the prison. What qualities does Pauline believe will enable her to change Leontes’ mind?
EMILIA: Most
worthy madam,
Your honor and your goodness is so evident
That your free undertaking cannot miss
A thriving issue. There is no lady living
So meet [fit] for this great errand.
Please your ladyship
To visit the next room, I'll presently
Acquaint the queen of your most noble
offer;
Who but to-day hammer'd of this design
[considered this plan],
But durst not tempt [ask] a minister
of honor [courtier],
Lest she should be denied.
PAULINA: Tell
her, Emilia.
I'll use that tongue I have. If wit flow
from 't
As boldness from my bosom, let ’t not be
doubted
I shall do good.
EMILIA: Now be you blest
for it!
I'll to the queen. Please you, come
something nearer.
JAILER: Madam, if 't please the queen to send the
babe,
I know not what I shall incur to pass it,
Having no warrant [official
permission].
PAULINA: You need
not fear it, sir:
This child was prisoner to the womb and is
By law and process of great nature thence
Freed and enfranchised, not a party to
The anger of the king nor guilty of,
If any be, the trespass of the queen.
JAILER: I
do believe it.
PAULINA: Do not you fear. Upon mine honor,
I will stand betwixt you and danger.
Paulina’s fame precedes her, as we see in Emilia’s remarks at lines 42 – 45: there is no lady living so meet for this great errand. We learn at lines 48 – 50 that Hermione had thought of the same plan of presenting Leontes with his infant daughter to change his mind, but the queen had been afraid to ask any of the courtly men around the king for fear of being turned down. At lines 50 -- 53 Paulina catalogues some of her attributes that will give her a chance to save the situation: her tongue (ability to speak); her wit (intelligence); her boldness (fearlessness). While Emilia goes off to get Hermione’s permission for Paulina to take the baby (and that’s asking a lot from a new mother!), the Jailer raises an objection: he has no permission to release the baby from prison. Paulina’s succinct argument at lines 58 – 62 calms his fears. It also sets forth one of the philosophical themes of this play and the other romances: Nature operates with its own laws and is not affected by human legal concerns, often governed by misperception and folly. Paulina offers her protection for the Jailer if he gets in any trouble because of her actions.
Act II, Scene 3
In this scene we see the escalation of events. Paulina’s plan appears goes horribly awry. The baby is apparently endangered. Leontes is even more determined to punish his family because of his own insanity. In reality things are moving in a complex pattern toward their eventual resolution. [Act II, scene 3]
In the first 25 lines we see Leontes tortured by the thought of his humiliation. How does he propose to gain some revenge for what has been done to him?
LEONTES: Nor night nor day no rest. It
is but weakness
To bear the matter thus, mere weakness. If
The cause were not in being,--part o' the
cause,
She the adulteress (for the harlot [lewd]
king
Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank
And level [target and aim] of my brain,
plot-proof); but she
I can hook to me -- say that she were gone,
Given to the fire, a moiety [portion]
of my rest
Might come to me again. Who's there?
SERVANT: My
lord?
LEONTES: How does the boy?
SERVANT: He took good rest
to-night; 'tis hoped
His sickness is
discharged.
LEONTES: To
see his nobleness!
Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
He straight declined, droop'd, took it
deeply,
Fasten'd and fix'd the shame on 't in
himself;
Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his
sleep,
And downright languish'd. Leave me solely. Go,
See how he fares. [Exit Servant]
Fie, fie, no
thought of him [Polixenes]:
The thought of my revenges that way
Recoil upon me -- in himself too mighty,
And in his parties, his alliance; let him
be
Until a time may serve. For present
vengeance
Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes
Laugh at me, make their pastime at my
sorrow;
They should not laugh if I could reach
them, nor
Shall she within my power.
Leontes cannot sleep, an affliction he has in common with most of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. He has lost his peace of mind because he imagines that Polixenes (the harlot king) and Camillo are laughing at him, but they are beyond his reach. Leontes makes it clear that he cannot harm Polixenes because he is too powerful and has allies that make him invulnerable, at least for the moment. Therefore he focuses on taking his revenge on Hermione. At line 7 he suggests that he might be able to sleep if he burned her at the stake. (Burning people alive was considered a particularly cruel form of execution and usually reserved for religious heretics; royal prisoners were normally beheaded since it was thought to be a more humane form of killing.) He repeats his threats against his wife at lines 21 and 25. The thing that seems to bother Leontes most is the idea that his wrongers are laughing at him. Killing his wife will silence their laughter. The most important information in this section is, of course, that Mamillius, his beloved son, has fallen ill. We can imagine that being forcibly taken from his mother and knowing she has been sent to prison would be traumatic for the little boy. And yet Leontes is convinced that his declining health is solely the result of realizing the dishonor of his mother which the little boy has taken to heart. Leontes never pauses to consider what the effect will be on his son if he burns his mother alive. Paulina’s efforts to resurrect Hermione’s reputation could not be coming at a worse time.
In the next sequence, lines 25 – 51, notice how Leontes has anticipated Paulina’s visit. How does she present her mission to the king? How does Leontes seek to control Paulina, at least indirectly? What do we learn about the relationship between Antigonus and Paulina?
[Enter PAULINA, with
a child]
LORD: You
must not enter.
PAULINA: Nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me
[help me]:
Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas,
Than the queen's life? A gracious innocent
soul,
More free [freer from sin] than he
is jealous.
ANTIGONUS: That's
enough.
SERVANT: Madam, he hath not slept tonight, commanded
None should come at him.
PAULINA: Not
so hot, good sir:
I come to bring him sleep. 'Tis such as
you,
That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh
At each his needless heavings
[rantings] -- such as you
Nourish the cause of his awaking. I
Do come with words as medicinal as true,
Honest as either, to purge him of that humor
[madness]
That presses him from sleep.
LEONTES: What
noise there, ho?
PAULINA: No noise, my lord, but needful conference
About some gossips [godparents] for
your highness.
LEONTES: How?
Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus,
I charged thee that she should not come
about me;
I knew she would.
ANTIGONUS: I told her
so, my lord,
On your displeasure's peril, and on mine,
She should not visit you.
LEONTES: What,
canst not rule her?
PAULINA: From all dishonesty he can: in this,
Unless he take the course that you have
done --
Commit me for committing honor, trust it,
He shall not rule me.
ANTIGONUS: La you now,
you hear,
When she will take the rein, I let her run;
But she'll not stumble.
Paulina enters the throne room, brushing aside the attempts to stop her and asking the courtiers for help in confronting Leontes to save the innocent queen. When a servant at line 30 warns that he has not slept, Paulina says she is bringing relief for the king. She then accuses the men who are seeking to stop her of being responsible for his plight: they creep like shadows by him and they sigh at each his needless heavings, a very picturesque way of describing Leontes’ rants. She offers him words as medicinal as true, to purge his humor, that is to relieve his madness. When Leontes asks who is making noise, Paulina describes her intrusion as needful conference about some gossips, that is finding godparents for the baby. Leontes recognizes Paulina, that audacious lady, and had predicted she would try to get in to confront him, so we know that her reputation has preceded her. Hapless Antigonus responds that he had told her not to bother the king, obviously to no effect. Leontes’ response is to attack Antigonus for being unable to control his wife. Notice how many times in this scene Leontes will attack Antigonus because of the actions of his wife. After this first attack, at line 46, Paulina responds by declaring that her husband can rule her from all dishonesty, but that he cannot rule her in this case, unless he were to act as Leontes has done, that is commit me for committing honor, that is imprison her for acting in an honorable fashion. Antigonus now acknowledges his wife’s independence, once again comparing her to a horse, but this time in a very positive manner: when she wants to do something, he does not attempt to rein her in, trusting that she’ll not stumble. The relationship between these two is one of the most modern among the married couples in all of the plays.
In the next sequence, lines 51 –82, Paulina tries to reason with Leontes to no avail. She is forced into an impossible confrontation with him that draws in all the members of the court. Notice how the baby becomes the focus of the conflict.
PAULINA: Good
my liege, I come --
And I beseech you hear me, who profess
Myself your loyal servant, your physician,
Your most obedient counselor; yet that dares
Less appear so in comforting your evils,
Than such as most seem yours
[nearest to you] -- I say, I come
From your good queen.
LEONTES: Good
queen!
PAULINA: Good queen, my lord, good queen, I say good queen,
And would by combat make [prove] her
good, so were I
A man, the worst about you [even if I
were of the lowest rank.]
LEONTES: Force
her hence.
PAULINA: Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes
First hand me. On mine own accord I'll off
[leave],
But first I'll do my errand. The good queen
(For she is good) hath brought you forth a
daughter;
Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing. [Laying
down the child]
LEONTES: Out!
A mankind [violent male] witch!
Hence with her, out o' door!
A most intelligencing bawd [scheming
female pimp]!
PAULINA: Not
so:
I am as ignorant in that as you
In so entitling me; and no less honest
Than you are mad; which is enough, I'll
warrant,
As this world goes, to pass for honest.
LEONTES: Traitors!
Will you not push her out? Give her the
bastard,
Thou dotard, thou art woman-tired [hen-pecked],
unroosted
By thy Dame Partlet [name for a hen]
here. Take up the bastard,
Take 't up, I say; give 't to thy crone.
PAULINA: Forever
Unvenerable [cursed] be thy
hands, if thou
Takest up the princess, by that forced
baseness
Which he has put upon 't!
LEONTES: He dreads
his wife.
PAULINA: So I would you did; then 'twere past all doubt
You'd call your children yours.
LEONTES: A
nest of traitors!
ANTIGONUS: I am none, by this good light.
PAULINA: Nor
I: nor any
But one that's here, and that's himself.
At first Paulina approaches Leontes in a respectful manner, calling herself his loyal servant, your physician and obedient counselor. But at line 55 she draws a line, refusing to comfort your evils, which she says the men around the king have done. She declares she has come from Leontes’ good queen. When Leontes objects to good, Paulina will not back down, using the word four times in the next three lines at 58 –60. In fact she says she would prove Hermione’s goodness in trial by combat which warriors have historically used. Leontes’ response to Paulina’s challenge is to order her to be removed. How many times does Leontes try to get Paulina out of his presence? When some of the courtiers move to comply with the king’s order, the audacious lady threatens to get physical, warning them she will scratch their eyes. She makes it clear she will leave when she chooses, but first she will complete her errand. She presents Leontes with his infant daughter, laying the baby at his feet. Leontes now goes ballistic, calling Paulina a mankind witch, an interesting attack that combines questions about her gender as well as her satanic connections. Then he adds a most intelligencing bawd, suggesting that she, as a conniving pimp, is a party to his wife’s sin. Paulina seems stung by the charge and at line 68 says she is as ignorant of what a bawd is as Leontes is ignorant in accusing her of being one. She adds another zinger, saying she is as honest as he is mad, which is enough in the world to pass for honest. Leontes definitely comes in second in a contest of insults with Paulina. In his frustration at not being able to control her, he lashes out at all those present, calling them traitors. He now orders Antigonus to give his wife the bastard, accusing him of being afraid of Paulina, woman-tiered or hen-pecked. (Dame Partlet was the traditional name for a hen as found in the folktale about Reynard the Fox and in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.) He calls Paulina Antigonus’ crone. It’s not a good idea to insult women about their ages! At line 75 Paulina counters with a curse upon any man who picks up the baby, the Princess, since Leontes has put a forced baseness upon her by calling her “the bastard.” We get some sense of her personal power, and the rightness of her cause, in the fact that none of the men present dare cross her, even though Leontes has the power of life-and-death over them. When Leontes once again tries to goad Antigonus into action by taunting that he is afraid of his wife, Paulina answers with another great gibe: It’s too bad Leontes does not dread his wife; if he did, he would acknowledge his own children as his own. Leontes tries to arouse his followers by again calling them “traitors.” Antigonus denies the charge at line 81 and his wife adds that the only person guilty of treason is Leontes who is a traitor to himself – a fitting description!
Both Camillo and Antigonus have suggested what Leontes has endangered by his mad obsession. Now at line 82 Paulina gives the most complete description of what he has put at risk. The king continues to try and get others to shut her up, but she shifts the ground and now uses the innocent baby and her appearance to convince Leontes of the error of his judgment. What does Paulina say she hopes the child will not emulate about her father?
PAULINA: For
he
The sacred honor of himself, his queen's,
His hopeful son's, his babe's, betrays to
slander,
Whose sting is sharper than the sword's;
and will not
(For, as the case now stands, it is a curse
He cannot be compelled [forced] to
't) once remove
The root of his opinion, which is rotten
As ever oak or stone was sound.
LEONTES: A
callat [shrew]
Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her
husband,
And now baits me! This brat is none of
mine;
It is the issue of Polixenes.
Hence with it, and together with the dam,
Commit them to the fire.
PAULINA: It
is yours:
And might we lay th’ old proverb to your
charge,
So like you, 'tis the worse. Behold, my
lords,
Although the print be little, the whole
matter
And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,
The trick of 's frown, his forehead, nay,
the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek;
his smiles;
The very mold and frame of hand, nail,
finger.
And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast
made it
So like to him that got it, if thou hast
The ordering of the mind too, 'mongst all
colors
No yellow [color of jealousy] in 't,
lest she suspect, as he does,
Her children not her husband's.
Paulina points out how Leontes betrays to slander the sacred honor of himself and family. Unfortunately he will not change his rotten opinion, nor is there any power that can force him to. Leontes responds with more name-calling at line 89, a callat, and again charges that she has beaten her husband and now baits the king. Now he suddenly returns to an idea he had first explored back at line 7 – take the brat and its dam and burn them! Paulina’s defense is to focus everyone’s attention on the baby, the abstract object of Leontes' rage. She asserts that the baby looks just like him, unfortunately. (She evokes an old proverb to make her point: “Your eldest son is so like you, he fares the worse for it.” She catalogs the similarities between the baby and her father, at least ten specific physical details. (Paulina is very clever here: no one can resist the charm of and fascination with a new-born baby!) She concludes by praying that the baby has not inherited her father’s mind, least she grow jealous and, when she gives birth, suspect that her own children are not those of her husband. This last idea seems preposterous, and it may be that Paulina is being deliberately outrageous and provocative to force Leontes to examine his own actions.
In the next sequence, lines 101 – 128, Leontes grows more threatening and crazed. Notice what one thing Paulina says that really hurts his feelings here. Why does she leave the baby?
LEONTES: A
gross hag
And, lozel [scoundrel], thou art
worthy to be hang'd,
That wilt not stay her tongue.
ANTIGONUS: Hang all the
husbands
That cannot do that feat, you'll leave
yourself
Hardly one subject.
LEONTES: Once more,
take her hence.
PAULINA: A most unworthy and unnatural lord
Can do no more.
LEONTES: I'll ha' thee burned.
PAULINA: I
care not;
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in 't. I'll not call
you tyrant;
But this most cruel usage of your queen,
(Not able to produce more accusation
Than your own weak-hinged [wobbly] fancy)
something savors
Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,
Yea, scandalous to the world.
LEONTES: On
your allegiance,
Out of the chamber with her! Were I a
tyrant,
Where were her life? she durst not call me
so,
If she did know me one. Away with her!
PAULINA: I pray you, do not push me; I'll be gone.
Look to your babe, my lord; 'tis yours:
Jove send her
A better guiding spirit. What needs these
hands?
You, that are thus so tender o'er his
follies,
Will never do him good, not one of you.
So, so: farewell; we are gone. [Exit]
Leontes’ threat at line 107 to hang Antigonus for failing to control his wife’s tongue sets up one of the few comic moments in the first half of the play with Antigonus’ response at line 108. At line 112 a frustrated Leontes now threatens Paulina with the fire. Her response is quite powerful and contains the one assertion that seems to sting the king. She begins by saying that should he have her burned at the stake, the only heretic (remember my earlier point about the methods of execution!) would be the man who ordered it, who has betrayed what he should have held sacred. Such an act would be tyranny, the arbitrary exercise of power over another, but Paulina mockingly says that she is not calling the king a tyrant. Of course, his cruel usage of Hermione savors of tyranny, especially since he has no more proof than his own weak-hinged fancy. It will make him appear ignoble and scandalous to the world – two things which no monarch could afford. The charge of tyranny, even when delivered indirectly, stings Leontes. At line 120 he denies it vehemently, pointing out that if he were a tyrant, Paulina would already be dead. Leontes finally plays his trump card to take control of the situation by reminding those present of their allegiance. Everyone in the kingdom owed the ruler allegiance, but those in the court had taken a second, personal oath of allegiance to the king, and it is that powerful obligation which Leontes reminds them of as he orders Paulina to be taken away. Even here Paulina challenges Leontes by leaving in her own way. She leaves the baby apparently hoping its presence will have the desired effect on him. She accuses the men of the court of being tender over his follies and of doing him no good.
With Paulina’s departure Leontes focuses his rage, at lines 129 – 156, on Antigonus. Why? Why does he want the baby burned? Do we get any hint of how Leontes views himself and his actions?
LEONTES: Thou, traitor, hast set on
thy wife to this.
My child? away with 't! Even thou, that
hast
A heart so tender o'er it, take it hence
And see it instantly consumed with fire.
Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up
straight:
Within this hour bring me word 'tis done,
And by good testimony, or I'll seize thy
life,
With what thou else call'st thine; if thou
refuse,
And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;
The bastard brains with these my proper
hands
Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire,
For thou sett'st on thy wife.
ANTIGONUS: I
did not, sir:
These lords, my noble fellows, if they
please,
Can clear me in 't.
LORDS: We can:
my royal liege,
He is not guilty of her coming hither.
LEONTES: You're liars all.
LORD: Beseech your highness, give us better
credit.
We have always truly served you, and
beseech you
So to esteem of us; and on our knees we
beg,
As recompense of our dear services
Past and to come, that you do change this
purpose,
Which being so horrible, so bloody, must
Lead on to some foul issue. We all kneel.
LEONTES: I am a feather for each wind that blows:
Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel
And call me father? Better burn it now
Than curse it then. But be it; let it live.
It shall not neither.
With Paulina’s departure Leontes returns to two common themes: Antigonus is a traitor because he set his wife on to attack the king; the only way to resolve the situation is to burn the problems, beginning with the baby. He orders Antigonus, as punishment, to take the infant and personally burn it. If he doesn’t, then Leontes will kill him and probably his family. Then the king will dash out the bastard brains, that is kill the baby himself. At line 139 for the fifth time Leontes orders someone to the fire. Antigonus denies that he set on his wife and asks the other members of the court to back him. The lords confirm his innocence, which king rejects. At line 145 a courageous lord steps forth and reminds Leontes that they have served him faithfully. He begs the king not to go ahead with the execution of the innocent child, warning him that such a horrible, bloody deed must lead on to some foul issue, or outcome. To emphasize the point the lord and all the other members of the court kneel to Leontes to plead with him. The act of kneeling before a king almost always marks a very dramatic moment in a Shakespearean play. At line 152 Leontes’ response reveals another revealing aspect of his character. He has run roughshod over many people’s lives up to this point in the play: his wife, his son, his friend and his advisors. And yet he sees himself as being weak and easily manipulated – I am a feather for each wind that blows. One of the symptoms of madness is a lack of realistic self image. He sees himself as Mister Nice Guy; everyone else sees a tyrant. Why is it so important that he kill the child? The idea of it kneeling before him, as the courtiers are doing at this moment, and calling him “father” is unsupportable. Better to burn it now than curse it then. We are reminded of the powerful fear of public humiliation that lay behind the obsession with cuckoldry for men in Shakespeare’s society. Then giving a perfect imitation of a feather at lines 155 – 156, Leontes pardons the baby but instantly changes his mind and condemns it again.
Leontes is frantic to get rid of his “problem,” the baby. If he cannot burn it, he will find another way to remove it. Who better to carry out the task than the man he holds responsible for the embarrassment of Paulina’s condemnation, Antigonus? In this next sequence notice the impossible dilemma the king imposes on his elderly advisor. What is Antigonus’ reaction to the horrible orders that he must carry out? We begin at line 156:
LEONTES: You,
sir, come you hither;
You that have been so tenderly officious
With Lady Margery [comic name for
hen], your midwife there,
To save this bastard's life --for 'tis a
bastard,
So sure as this [Antigonus’] beard's
gray --what will you adventure
[risk],
To save this brat's life?
ANTIGONUS: Anything, my
lord,
That my ability may undergo,
And nobleness impose -- at least thus much:
I'll pawn the little blood which I have
left,
To save the innocent -- any thing possible.
LEONTES: It shall be possible. Swear by this sword
Thou wilt perform my bidding.
ANTIGONUS: I
will, my lord.
LEONTES: Mark and perform it, see'st thou? for the fail
[failure]
Of any point in 't shall not only be
Death to thyself but to thy lewd-tongued
wife,
Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee,
As thou art liegeman [sworn subject]
to us, that thou carry
This female bastard hence, and 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 its own protection
And favor of the climate. As by strange
fortune
It came to us, I do in justice charge thee,
On thy soul's peril, and thy body's
torture,
That thou commend it strangely to some
place
Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it
up.
ANTIGONUS: I swear to do this, though a present death
Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe,
Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and
ravens
To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they
say,
Casting their savageness aside, have done
Like offices of pity. Sir, be prosperous
In more than this deed does require
[deserve]! And blessing
Against this cruelty fight on thy [baby’s]
side,
Poor thing, condemn'd to loss. [Exit
with the child]
LEONTES: No,
I'll not rear
Another's issue.
Leontes begins by asking Antigonus what he would risk to save the “bastard’s” life. In the process he insults Paulina, calling her a “hen” for the second time and probably pulling her husband’s beard at line 160. His advisor answers that he will do anything, even if it means his life. (Ultimately Antigonus will lose his life.) Before he reveals the insidious details he has in mind, Leontes makes Antigonus swear a sacred oath, using the handle of his sword. (In another anachronism in this play supposedly set in pre-Christian times, we have a Christian ritual of the older man swearing on the cross formed by the handle and blade of the sword.) If Antigonus does not fulfill every detail of the task, the king will kill Antigonus and his lewd-tongued wife. He is to take the baby to a foreign country, to a remote and desert place, and leave it there without providing any help. As Leontes says, the baby came to him by strange fortune (meaning that the child was created by an unnatural process involving Polixenes, a stranger) and he wants his advisor to commend it strangely to some place (as a stranger to the king). He leaves it to chance, or Fate, to decide if it will live or die. (And that is exactly what happens, although neither Leontes nor Antigonus has any idea the baby will survive.) At line 182 Antigonus agrees to go ahead with the plan, although he says it would be kinder to just kill the baby now. He expresses the hope that old folklore is true about birds and animals taking pity on the infant and raising it as their own. He gives Leontes an indirect but telling insult at line 187: Sir, be prosperous/ In more than this deed does require. He says that condemning the infant to death is a terrible act and will in no way help the king earn prosperity or a good reputation. He ends by wishing blessings on the little soul who must endure this cruelty. As he leaves with the baby, Leontes reiterates what he sees as the only issue involved – he will not raise another man’s child.
The scene ends with news that the two ambassadors Leontes sent to Apollo’s oracle at Delos (an island Shakespeare mistook for the famous temple to Apollo at Delphi) have returned. Leontes is anxious to judge his wife in a just and open trial so he can execute her and ease the burden on his mind and soul.
Act III, Scene 1
This short scene takes place on a road outside the palace as Cleomenes and Dion return with the sealed message from Apollo’s oracle. They mention the fertile island where the oracle was located with its pleasant climate (in contrast to the claustrophobic feel of the play to this point, with all the action taking place inside Leontes’ palace in the winter). They praised the solemnity and richness of the ritual and the priests who conducted the business of the oracle. They both fervently hope the document they bring will help clear Hermione, whom they believe is innocent and badly used. There is no one in the play, up to this point, who finds any validity in Leontes’ charges.. They express the wish that something rare will spring forth when the oracle is revealed. The dramatic purpose of this short scene is to provide a kind of relief before the intense trial scene and the outcome of the ordeal of the baby.
Act III, Scene 2
The trial scene is one of the dramatic highpoints of the play. The first half of the scene will emphasize Leontes’ mad insistence on destroying his wife under the guise of justice and her elegant and eloquent of defense. It will lead to the sudden and awful emotional climax with the opening of the oracle. [Act III, scene 2, lines 1 – 142]
The trial is held outside with an audience of many of Sicilia’s subjects. In Leontes’ opening speech he begins the trial by assuring everyone that it pains him, pushes ‘gainst our heart, to proceed against his once beloved wife, the daughter of a king. However, at line 4 he explains that he wants to be cleared of any charge of being a tyrant, (That remark of Paulina’s really stung him!) so he is holding a trial to determine her guilt or purgation [acquittal]. The lengthy charges are read at line 12 and include not only the adultery, but the accusation that Hermione was part of a plot to kill her husband and had helped Camillo and Polixenes escape. At line 21 Hermione gives her first response:
Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation, and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say “Not guilty”; mine integrity
Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,
Be so received. But thus: if powers divine
Behold our human actions -- as they do --
I doubt not then, but Innocence shall make
False Accusation blush, and Tyranny
Tremble at Patience. You, my lord, best know --
Who least will seem to do so -- my past life
Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,
As I am now unhappy; which is more
Than history can pattern [parallel], though devised
And play'd to take spectators. For behold me,
A fellow of the royal bed, which owe [owned]
A moiety [portion] of the throne, a great king's daughter,
The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing
To prate and talk for life and honor, 'fore
Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare; for honor,
'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for. I appeal
To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes
Came to your court, how I was in your grace,
How merited to be so; since he came,
With what encounter so uncurrent [out of the ordinary], I
Have strain'd to appear thus: if one jot beyond
The bound of honor, or in act or will
That way inclining, harden'd be the hearts
Of all that hear me, and my near'st of kin
Cry fie upon my grave!
Leontes has appeared at times petulant and childish in his irrational rages. His wife, when she is finally allowed to respond, is eloquent and measured. This is a remarkable speech! She begins by denying the charge, of course, while pointing out that her husband’s attack on her integrity has made suspect everything she may say in her defense. However, she believes that higher powers will eventually confirm her innocence, and her patience in the face of this injustice will make the tyranny of her husband tremble. (There’s that ugly word tyranny again!) Her past behavior has been above reproach; now she is more unhappy than a playwright could devise for a drama enacted for the stage. She was once daughter of a king and then the wife of a king and owned a part of the throne (probably because of her marriage agreement). Then she was the mother of a prince. Now she must stand in the public docket and talk of life and honor before an audience of whoever wishes to come and listen, a terrible insult for someone like Hermione. At line 41 she makes a remarkable statement: For life, I prize it as I weigh grief, which I would spare. In other words, she’s no longer interested in continuing to live under these circumstances. She is only interested in protecting her honor and that because of her son. She appeals to her husband to specify what exactly she is to have done that was so uncurrent, or unusual, that it warranted his suspicion and accusation. If he can show one instance of her having behaved in an improper fashion, she asks that all hearts be hardened against her and her own family cry fie upon her grave!
Against this defense Leontes, beginning at line 53, tries a combination of ridicule, anger, petulant assertion and finally threat of physical violence, as he tries to force her to confess. How does Hermione counter his efforts?
LEONTES: I
ne'er heard yet
That any of these bolder vices wanted
Less impudence to gainsay [deny]
what they did,
Than to perform it first.
HERMIONE: That's true
enough;
Though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me.
LEONTES: You will not own [admit] it.
HERMIONE: More than
mistress of
Which comes to me in name of fault, I must
not
At all acknowledge. For Polixenes,
With whom I am accused, I do confess
I loved him as in honor he required,
With such a kind of love, as might become
A lady like me; with a love, even such,
So and no other, as yourself commanded:
Which not to have done, I think had been in
me
Both disobedience and ingratitude
To you and toward your friend, whose love
had spoke,
Even since it could speak, from an infant,
freely
That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy,
I know not how it tastes, though it be
dish'd
For me to try how; all I know of it,
Is that Camillo was an honest man;
And why he left your court, the gods
themselves,
Wotting [knowing] no more than I,
are ignorant.
LEONTES: You knew of his departure, as you know
What you have underta'en to do in 's
absence.
HERMIONE: Sir,
You speak a language that I understand not.
My life stands in the level [range]
of your dreams,
Which I'll lay down.
LEONTES: Your
actions are my dreams;
You had a bastard by Polixenes,
And I but dream'd it. As you were past all
shame --
Those of your fact [guilty of the
same crime] are so -- so past all truth;
Which to deny concerns more than avails
[what you are denying won’t
do you any good]; for as
Thy brat hath been cast out, like to
itself,
No father owning it (which is indeed
More criminal in thee than it ) so thou
Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest
[least cruel] passage
Look for no less than death.
At line 53 Leontes mocks his wife’s denial, saying that people who have committed such evil sins as she has have no problem denying their crimes. She denies that she is guilty of either sin or lying, and his response is that she has just not yet confessed. At line 58 Hermione, in a complicated sentence, says she cannot confess to a crime she has not committed. At line 62 she dramatically admits that she loved Polixenes, but only as was required by the honor of a royal visitor, a kind of love as might become a lady like me, that is the chaste love required of a royal hostess and indeed the kind of love her husband commanded her to show his friend, which, as a dutiful wife, she did. She points out that Polixenes, as he told her back at the beginning of Act I, scene 2, had loved Leontes ever since they were infants together. She denies the charge of conspiracy, saying at line 71 she knows not how that dish tastes. She says she has no idea why Camillo left the court, but that he had always been honest. Leontes at line 76 peevishly accuses her of knowing about Camillo and Polixenes’ departure and darkly hints that she knew what she was supposed to do once they had gone. (We can only assume he’s talking about the nebulous plot to kill him.) Hermione counters that she has no idea what he’s talking about, that he has made her a target in his dreams. Leontes angrily says, at line 80, that the dreams belong to her, including the bastard she had with Polixenes. Once again he asserts that she is so sinful she no longer blushes about telling lies. He tells his wife that her baby has been cast out since it had no father. The responsibility for this terrible crime lies with her. He finishes by threatening her with a terribly painful punishment where death will come as a relief (lines 88—89).
Hermione’s final speech at line 89 once again emphasizes her grace and powerful testament to the truth in the face of her husband’s mad ranting. Here she makes a full catalogue of the indignities he has subjected his wife to. How many different things does she list that he has done to her? In the end she demands the judgment of Apollo.
Sir, spare
your threats:
The bug [bogey man] which you would fright me with, I seek.
To me can life be no commodity [asset].
The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
I do give lost, for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy,
And first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barred, like one infectious. My third comfort,
Starred most unluckily, is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder. Myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet: with immodest [excessive] hatred
The child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion [social classes]. Lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air [believed to cause
disease], before
I have got strength of limit [after childbirth]. Now, my
liege,
Tell me, what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.
But yet hear this -- mistake me not; no life,
I prize it not a straw, but for mine honor,
Which I would free -- if I shall be condemn'd
Upon surmises, all proofs [evidence] sleeping else
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you
'Tis rigor and not law [tyranny, not law]. Your honors all,
I do refer me to the oracle:
Apollo be my judge! ….
The Emperor of Russia was my father.
O that he were alive, and here beholding
His daughter's trial! That he did but see
The flatness [completeness] of my misery, yet with eyes
Of pity, not revenge!
At line 89 Hermione dismisses Leontes’ threat of painful death, since she would welcome that fate. She lists the major losses she has sustained: the king’s love and favor; the comfort of her little son; the loss of her infant daughter who has, she believes, been murdered. She has suffered some additional outrages: she has been publicly proclaimed a strumpet; and as a new mother she has been denied what was called “the lying-in period,” or respite after labor; and hurried out into the open-air which was believed very unhealthy. She sarcastically asks Leontes what blessing life might have for her to avoid death. At line 107 she makes clear she will continue to deny the charges and fight for her innocence because she will protect her honor for the sake of her son. For the first time she shows some bitterness when she says that if she is convicted simply on her husband’s charges rather than any solid evidence, then this process is rigor and not law. She finishes by calling for the judgment of Apollo to decide her fate. After the judge grants her request at line 114, she adds a poignant postscript. She wishes that her father, the Emperor of Russia, could see her suffering – not for revenge against her husband, but simply for an expression of pity, something she cannot expect from her husband.
The oracles of Apollo were infamous in the ancient world for being weasel-worded, filled with ambiguity so that any number of interpretations were possible. (Even the God of Knowledge and Truth wanted to avoid offending people if he could.) Listen to the oracle at line 130. Is there any wiggle-room in its interpretation? Once the god has spoken, notice Leontes’ reaction. Notice how quickly things fall apart after that point.
LEONTES: Break up the seals and
read.
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 blessed 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' the oracle.
The sessions [trial] shall
proceed; this is mere falsehood.
[Enter Servant]
SERVANT: My lord, the King, the King!
LEONTES: What is
the business?
SERVANT: O sir, I shall be hated to report it.
The Prince, your son, with mere conceit [thought]
and fear
Of the Queen's speed [fate], is
gone.
LEONTES: How?
Gone?
SERVANT: Is
dead.
There is absolutely no ambiguity about Apollo’s message (which had been sealed at the oracle by the priests). Leontes is flat wrong. As befits a man who has obsessed on his own fantasy, the kings denies the word from the gods, and he pays the price almost immediately. A servant rushes in with news that Mamillius has died, his death not caused by his mother’s infidelity but by his father’s madness.
Act III, Scene 2, Lines 143 – 241
When Leontes sees the light, he immediately changes his mind. Just as he had earlier insisted on making all the nasty details of Hermione’s alleged affair public, now he will confess fully all the things he has done wrong, including some crimes that no one except Camillo knows about. Notice who becomes Leontes’ new advisor/parole officer, who will see to it that he never forgets the awful things he has done. How is it possible this person is given so much power over the monarch?
We begin with the immediate aftermath of the startling revelation. Now we know that Hermione will survive and go into hiding. Notice how Shakespeare begins the process of fooling us into believing she has died. Leontes’ long confession is quite remarkable. How do you think the on-lookers felt about what they heard?
LEONTES: Apollo's angry; and the
heavens themselves
Do strike at my injustice. [HERMIONE
swoons]
How now there!
PAULINA: This news is mortal to the Queen -- look down
And see what death is doing.
LEONTES: Take
her hence:
Her heart is but o'ercharged; she will
recover.
I have too much believed mine own suspicion.
Beseech you tenderly apply to her
Some remedies for life. [Exeunt PAULINA,
Ladies with HERMIONE]
Apollo,
pardon
My great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle!
I'll reconcile me to Polixenes,
New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo
--
Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy.
For, being transported by my jealousies
To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose
Camillo for the minister to poison
My friend Polixenes; which had been done,
But that the good mind of Camillo tardied
[delayed]
My swift command, though I with death and
with
Reward did threaten and encourage him,
Not doing it and being done. He, most
humane,
And filled with honor, to my kingly guest
Unclasped my practice, quit his fortunes
here --
Which you knew great -- and to the hazard
Of all uncertainties himself commended,
No richer than his honor. How he glisters
Through my rust! And how his pity
Does my deeds make the blacker!
Leontes sees the error of his fantasy as quickly as the fantasy seized his imagination back in Act I, scene 2. The queen faints at news of her son’s death, and Paulina immediately announces that Hermione is dead. (Her request at line 145 to look down is probably directed at the gods.) Leontes wants to believe that she has just lost consciousness and will recover when she is taken out. At line 150 his contrition begins: he asks for pardon for profaning against Apollo; he vows he will new woo his wife and seek reconciliation with Polixenes; he promises to recall Camillo and confesses how he tried to get him to murder Polixenes with threats and rewards. He concludes by announcing that Camillo’s moral actions had made his plot appear all the more wicked.
At line 169 Paulina comes back in with the devastating news of Hermione’s death. Her lengthy announcement of the tragic consequences of all Leontes’ sins is incredibly powerful, first in convincing everyone, including the audience, that the queen is dead and then into shaming the king into placing his punishment in her hands:
What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels, racks, fires? what flaying, boiling
In leads or oils? What old or newer torture
Must I receive, whose every word deserves
To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,
Together working with thy jealousies,
Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle
For girls of nine -- O, think what they have done,
And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices [samples] of it.
That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,
And damnable ingrateful. Nor was 't much
Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honor,
To have him kill a king -- poor trespasses [crimes],
More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon
The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter
To be or none, or little; though a devil
Would have shed water [wept] out of fire ere done 't;
Nor is 't directly laid to thee the death
Of the young Prince, whose honorable thoughts,
Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire
Blemish'd his gracious dam. This is not, no,
Laid to thy answer; but the last -- O lords,
When I have said, cry “woe”: the Queen, the Queen,
The sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead; and vengeance for 't
Not dropped down yet…..
I say she's dead; I'll swear 't. If word nor oath
Prevail not, go and see; if you can bring
Tincture or luster in her lip, her eye,
Heat outwardly or breath within, I'll serve you
As I would do the gods. But, O thou tyrant,
Do not repent these things, for they are heavier
Than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee
To nothing but despair. A thousand knees,
Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,
Upon a barren mountain, and still winter
In storm perpetual, could not move the gods
To look that way thou wert.
Paulina begins back on the same theme Leontes had sounded when she last confronted him: the threat of his killing her. She lists some of the ingenious forms of torture and death used in those days, such as the rack and boiling in lead. But now, she says, these cruelties will be her reward for telling him some awful news. Naturally she will not tell him until she has reminded him of all the other sins he has committed, a list running from line 177 to 198. How many sins does she say he is responsible for, including Hermione’s death? And it’s not just the listing of his sins; she also accompanies each with a savage attack upon his stupidity and immorality. When she reaches the dramatic climax of announcing Hermione’s death, she laments, Vengeance for it not dropped down yet. At line 200 when onlookers express shock at the news of Hermione’s death, Paulina challenges them to try and revive her, saying if they can bring her back, she will worship them as gods. She finishes with one of the most powerful curses in all of Shakespeare’s plays at line 205. She tells Leontes not to try and repent for his sins; they are too heavy to be forgiven, and he must sink into despair, that state of profound spiritual hopelessness that people in Shakespeare’s age feared most. If Leontes somehow multiplied himself into 500 penitents to kneel in prayer (two legs each equal one thousand knees), and they knelt asking for forgiveness for ten thousand years, and they were naked to show that they were really contrite, and they were fasting for all that time, and they were on a barren mountain, and it was always winter and there was a storm perpetual, it still wouldn’t be enough! Leontes will never be able to get the gods to forgive him. That’s heavy-duty despair! Paulina’s hold on Leontes’ conscience for the next 16 years may well be the result of this powerful recitation of his sins and her condemnation to despair.
In the final sequence in this scene, notice how Leontes reacts to Paulina’s curse and what the other members of the court have to say. Paulina will attempt at line 216 to “soften” her brutal message. Is she successful? How does Leontes define his future relationship with Paulina at the end of the scene?
LEONTES: Go
on, go on;
Thou canst not speak too much, I have
deserved
All tongues to talk their bitterest.
LORD: Say
no more;
Howe'er the business goes, you have made
fault
I' the boldness of your speech.
PAULINA: I
am sorry for 't;
All faults I make, when I shall come to
know them,
I do repent. Alas, I have showed too much
The rashness of a woman; he is touched
To the noble heart. What's gone and what's
past help
Should be past grief; do not receive
affliction
At my petition; I beseech you, rather
Let me be punished that have minded
[reminded] you
Of what you should forget. Now, good my
liege,
Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman.
The love I bore your queen--lo, fool again!
I'll speak of her no more, nor of your
children;
I'll not remember [remind] you of my
own lord,
Who is lost too. Take your patience to you,
And I'll say nothing.
LEONTES: Thou didst
speak but well,
When most the truth which I receive much
better
Than to be pitied of thee. Prithee, bring
me
To the dead bodies of my queen and son.
One grave shall be for both; upon them
shall
The causes of their death appear, unto
Our shame perpetual. Once a day I'll visit
The chapel where they lie, and tears shed
there
Shall be my recreation. So long as nature
Will bear up with this exercise, so long
I daily vow to use it. Come and lead me
Unto these sorrows.
Leontes welcomes Paulina’s harsh indictment, saying that he deserves everyone’s criticism. (We’ve seen Leontes in the first three acts react in the extreme to every situation, another clue to his underlying character.) One of the on-looking lords, however, takes exception to Paulina’s speaking to the king in such a disrespectful way. At line 216 she is suddenly contrite, repenting any faults she may have exhibited and pleading that she has shown the rashness of a woman. Now we can take Paulina at her word and see her as genuinely sorry for having upset Leontes with her hyperbolic condemnation. Or we can see her as being subtly sarcastic, claiming that her rashness is a result of her gender. (If that is so, what was Leontes’ excuse?) The king has just lost his wife and son, but courtly etiquette requires that the king not be duly upset, so Paulina offers this little bromide at line 220: What’s gone and what’s past help/Should be past grief. No reason to dwell on the negative. She apologizes for her earlier wish that Leontes suffer and says she won’t remind him of his loss. Of course, she immediately evokes the memory of Hermione at line 226 and then of his children at line 227 and, of course, of her own husband who is now lost to her. She concludes by asking him to be patient and promising to say nothing more. I think Paulina is being sarcastic through this entire speech; she will continue to remind Leontes constantly of his loss and his culpability for the next 16 years! That’s his self-imposed punishment. At line 230 the king acknowledges that Paulina was right all along and promises to spend the rest of his life in mourning.
Act III, Scene 3
This scene is the turning point for the whole play. We will go from gut-wrenching tragedy to romantic comedy in the twinkling of an eye. In no other play does Shakespeare accomplish such a dramatic transformation, and it is a wonder to behold. Not only is the change fully supported conceptually in terms of details and logical connections, but emotionally the shift is consistent. Identify the exactly point where the play changes. [Act III, scene 3]
Antigonus has brought the baby to Bohemia by ship, to an area apparently uninhabited and notorious for predatory animals. The ship captain warns him to complete his business quickly, since a storm is brewing. Antigonus explains to us why he has brought the child here to be abandoned. What three assumptions does Antigonus make in the first 57 lines of this scene? Are they correct?
Come, poor
babe;
I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o' the dead
May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother
Appear'd to me last night; for ne'er was dream
So like a waking. To me comes a creature,
Sometimes her head on one side, some another;
I never saw a vessel of like sorrow
So fill'd, and so becoming [so sad yet so beautiful]. In
pure white robes,
Like very sanctity [holiness itself], she did approach
My cabin where I lay; thrice bow'd before me,
And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes
Became two spouts; the fury spent, anon
Did this break-from her: “Good Antigonus,
Since fate, against thy better disposition,
Hath made thy person for the thrower-out
Of my poor babe, according to thine oath,
Places remote enough are in Bohemia,
There weep, and leave it crying; and for the babe
Is counted lost for ever, Perdita [means “lost girl”]
I prithee, call 't. For this ungentle business
Put on thee by my lord, thou ne'er shalt see
Thy wife Paulina more.” And so, with shrieks,
She melted into air. Affrighted much,
I did in time collect myself, and thought
This was so, and no slumber [true and no dream]. Dreams are
toys;
Yet for this once, yea superstitiously,
I will be squared [convinced] by this. I do believe
Hermione hath suffer'd death, and that
Apollo would (this being indeed the issue
Of King Polixenes) it should here be laid
Either for life, or death, upon the earth
Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well! [lays baby
down]
There lie, and there thy character [description]: there
these; [places bundle]
Which may, if Fortune please, both breed thee [pay for your
upbringing], pretty,
And still rest thine [remain yours]. The storm begins; poor
wretch,
That for thy mother's fault art thus exposed
To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot,
But my heart bleeds; and most accursed am I
To be by oath enjoin'd [forced] to this. Farewell,
The day frowns more and more; thou 'rt like to have
A lullaby too rough; I never saw
The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamor!
Well may [must] I get aboard! This is the chase
[hunt];
I am gone forever. [Exit, pursued by bear]
Behind Antigonus’ decision to leave the baby in Bohemia is the dream he has of the spirit of Hermione. From that dream he draws three assumptions:
1.) He will never see his wife again. (We learn this is true within 20 lines.)
2.) Hermione is already dead. (We assume true because of the last scene.)
3.) The infant’s father is Polixenes. (We now know this to be false.)
Shakespeare is very clever in hiding the ultimate truth from the audience. With Antigonus’ death after line 57, we know the dream was correct in predicting he would never see his wife again. So we are led to accept the second assumption about Hermione being dead, especially after Paulina made such a big deal out of the queen’s demise in the previous scene. Consequently the audience is likely to overlook the third assumption, that the ghost wants the baby left in Bohemia because its father was Polixenes, even though we now know that to be false. (Once we’ve seen the whole play we realize the ghost’s directive about leaving the baby in Bohemia is so that she will grow up, fall in love with the prince and elope with him and seek refuge in Sicilia where her true identity will be discovered.) Even the name the ghost directs Antigonus to give the child, Perdita, is in keeping with the complex plan of Fate or whatever higher power orders the events of the world of the play. The written record and the gold which Antigonus leave with the foundling also play a part in the revealing of the truth, in time. As soon as he has placed the infant on the ground, the bear (for which we had been prepared back in Act II, scene 3, line 185 and at line 11 in this scene) arrives. The stage direction here -- “Exit, pursued by bear” – is among the most famous in all of the plays, and even shows up occasionally in cartoons like Yogi Bear. On Shakespeare’s stage the actors sometimes used a live bear! The Globe Theater was near the Bear Gardens, the place where people paid to watch bears fight dogs, bulls and occasionally homeless boys. According to one account a bear was borrowed for this scene and did a cameo role! It must have been a super special effect. In productions I’ve seen everything from a guy in a bear suit to a shadow looming on the wall, but I’ve never seen a real bear. This ends the tragic story of Leontes as the last connection to the tortured world of Sicilia disappears from the play.
With the entrance of the Shepherd the romantic comedy begins. What does Shakespeare use to signal this shift? Why is the Shepherd at this place at this particular time? Why don’t this character and his son have names?
I would there were no age between ten and
three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the
rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting
wenches with child, wronging the ancientry [older, responsible people], stealing,
fighting. Hark you now! Would any but these boiled
brains [hot-heads] of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this
weather? They have scared away two of my
best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find
than the master: if anywhere I have them, 'tis by
the seaside, browsing of ivy. [Sees baby] Good luck, an 't
be thy
will, what have we here? Mercy on 's, a barne [baby, in
dialect]! A
very pretty barne; a boy or a child [girl, in country dialect], I wonder?
A pretty one, a very pretty one; sure, some 'scape[adventure];
though I am not bookish [literate], yet I can read waiting-
gentlewoman in the 'scape. This has been some stair-
work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work;
they were warmer that got [begot] this than the poor thing
is here. I'll take it up for pity; yet I'll tarry till my
son come; he hallooed but even now. Whoa-ho hoa!
The thing that comes through most clearly is that here is a person who has no idea about Leontes or his problems. He is an ordinary man who sees the world in a limited way but with real decency. He comes in complaining about those damned kids, something that older folks do in every generation. For him human sexuality is an inconvenient but natural aspect of youth, not something that you burn people at the stake over. His immediate problem is that some crazy youngsters have scared off two of his sheep. Here he is on a stormy day, looking for his livestock in this place near the beach where he knows his animals like to graze on ivy. When he finds the baby, his immediate reaction is to ask for a divine blessing: Good luck, an ‘t be thy will, what have we here? “May the gods grant me good luck if they choose to, what’s this?” His next reaction is perfectly normal -- what is the gender of the child? Then he wonders who the parents are. He tells us he may be illiterate, not bookish, but he can guess that the baby came from an attendant at court. Waiting gentlewomen were supposed to remain unmarried and chaste, despite the temptations of the court and so might want hide the fact they had given birth. He guesses from the rich cloth and the things left with the baby that it comes from an upper class woman. He smiles at the idea of the sexual high jinks that are implied in the circumstances of the baby’s abandonment, the places where the sex took place, stairs, behind the door, or the way the lover snuck into the room, in a trunk. The most important thing in the whole speech is that the simple Shepherd instinctively seeks to protect the baby and decides to take it as his own, out of human pity, unlike Leontes earlier in the play. We really are in a different world than we were in Sicilia. Shakespeare has signaled this change by switching from verse, which he has used almost exclusively up to this point, to prose.
In the next sequence the Shepherd is joined by his son, called Clown. Why do these characters not have names? What are the circumstances which will keep anyone from discovering Perdita’s true identity for 16 years? How does this sequence combine elements of tragedy and comedy?
[Enter
Clown]
CLOWN: Hilloa, loa!
SHEPHERD: What? Art so near? If thou 'lt see a thing to
talk on, when thou art dead and rotten, come hither.
What ail’st thou, man?
CLOWN: I have seen two such
sights, by sea and by land!
But I am not to say it is a sea, for it is
now the sky;
betwixt the firmament
and it, you cannot thrust
a bodkin's [needle’s] point.
SHEPHERD: Why, boy, how is it?
CLOWN: I would you did but see how it chafes, how
it rages,
how it takes up the shore, but that's not
to the
point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor
souls!
Sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em;
now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast,
and anon swallowed with yeast and froth, as you'd
thrust a cork into a
hogshead. And then for the
land-service, to see how the bear tore out
his
shoulder bone; how he cried to me for help,
and
said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman! But to
make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-
dragooned [swallowed] it; but first, how the poor souls roared,
and the sea mocked them; and how the poor
gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both
roaring louder than the
sea or weather.
SHEPHERD: Name of mercy, when was this, boy?
CLOWN: Now, now; I have not winked since I saw these
sights; the men are not yet cold under
water, nor
the bear half dined on the gentleman; he's
at it now.
SHEPHERD; Would I had been by, to have helped the old man!
CLOWN: I would you had been by the ship side, to
have
helped her; there your charity would have
lacked
footing.
SHEPHERD: Heavy matters, heavy matters! But look thee
here,
boy. Now bless thyself: thou met’st with
things
dying, I with things new born. Here's a
sight
for thee; look thee, a
bearing-cloth for a squire's
child; look thee here, take up, take up,
boy; open it. [the chest]
So, let's see; it was told me I should be rich by the
fairies. This is some changeling; open 't; what's
within, boy?
CLOWN: You're a made old man; if the sins of your
youth are forgiven you, you're well to live. Gold,
all gold!
SHEPHERD: This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so; up
with 't, keep it close [secret];
home, home, the next way!
We are lucky, boy; and to be so still
requires
nothing but secrecy. Let my sheep go; come,
good
boy, the next way home.
CLOWN: Go you the next way with your findings. I'll
go
see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and
how much he hath eaten. They are never curst but
when they are hungry. If there be any of him left,
I'll bury it.
SHEPHERD: That's a good deed. If thou mayest discern by
that
which is left of him what he is, fetch me
to the
sight of him.
CLOWN: Marry will I; and you shall help to put him
i'
the ground.
SHEPHERD: 'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds
on 't.
The content of this sequence is very tragic, as Antigonus is
killed and eaten by a bear, fulfilling the prophecy of the dream, and all the
people on the ship which brought him are drowned. However, the way in which
the tragedy is relayed is comic. All connections between Leontes and Perdita
have been severed, except the document Antigonus left with the baby. We
see this mix of emotions in the Shepherd’s statement at line 112: thou
met’st with things dying, I with things newborn. The two men are decent and
sympathetic to those they see suffering. They will bury what is left of
Antigonus and mourn those drowned in the storm and raise the baby. But
Shakespeare distances the audience from that suffering by the way the Clown
delivers the message. He starts out consumed with describing the stormy sea,
which was so overwhelming that he cannot distinguish between the gray skies and
the waves, but that’s not the point he wants to convey. He cannot make up his
mind whether to tell about the sinking ship first or the man being eaten by a
bear, so he comically mixes the two accounts together. He calls the bear
attack the land service to set it apart from the naval action (but also
as an unconscious pun in questionable taste about the bear’s dining or service.)
The suffering is real enough, and we know Antigonus and are appalled at his
fate. But when the Clown says, at line 105, that the bear hath half dined
on the gentleman; he’s at him even now, you have to smile, at least a
little. Or when he describes how the sea flap-dragoned the ship,
comparing this horrible tragedy to the trick of swallowing raisins out of
flaming brandy; now that’s funny. There’s also a silly pun about the Shepherd
going to help the sinking ship where his charity would have lacked footing,
a reference explained at line 110. At line 114 the Shepherd points out the
rich cloth Perdita is wrapped in, the kind of thing the child of a squire
or upper class man would have. It is not until line 115 that the Shepherd and
Clown finally open the chest which Antigonus left with gold for the raising of
the baby. The Shepherd immediately thinks the gold is fairy gold and
the child a changeling, which your footnotes explain. If you found fairy
gold, you must keep it secret, least the fairies come back and extract
revenge on you. So the two illiterate men who find the key to the identity of
a princess will not know who she is, and they will keep the circumstances by
which they found her quiet for the next 16 years. Finally these decent men who
will undertake the task of raising a baby that her own father has sought to
destroy are considered so socially inferior, being country bumpkins, that they
are given no names; only their occupation – Shepherd – and their social
stigma – Clown – will identify them in the rest of the play. It is an
ironic fate for men who become heroes.
Act IV, Scene 1
This short scene has the allegorical character of Time come in and explain in rhyming couplets that 16 years have now passed, and Perdita, a shepherd’s daughter, has grown into a remarkable young woman and has met Florizel, the prince of Bohemia. The idea of having such a long passage of time within a drama was so unusual that Shakespeare seems to have felt the need to explain it to his audience. Shakespeare’s contemporary and friend, Ben Jonson, would attack this very aspect of the play in some critical comments he later wrote. We can skip it and move on to the next scene.
Act IV, Scene 2
This scene between Polixenes and Camillo at the court of Bohemia establishes three key points in the plot:
1.) After all the years in exile, Camillo is anxious to return to Sicilia before he dies. It is his homeland, and a repentant Leontes has implored him to return. However, Polixenes has come to depend so greatly upon his advisor that he will not allow Camillo to leave.
2.) Prince Florizel is often absent from court and his official duties. His father has had him followed and discovered that his son is frequently found at the home of a lowly shepherd with a beautiful daughter. The shepherd became very wealthy some years before.
3.) Polixenes fears his son has been entrapped by the shepherd’s beautiful daughter. He proposes that he and Camillo disguise themselves and visit the shepherd and find out what the prince is up to.
Act IV, Scene 3
Having prepared us for the story of the lost princess, Shakespeare is in no hurry to get there. First we have to meet the key character of the second half of the play, an improbable petty thief named Autolycus who has no apparent connection at all with Leontes or Perdita. How does this character support himself? [Act IV, scene 3]
In the opening sequence, lines 1 – 31, we meet Autolycus who is a professional thief who has found a criminal niche for himself. He brings an element a carefree irresponsibility and music into the play.
[singing]
When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh the doxy [girlfriend] over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh the sweet birds, O how they sing!
Doth set my pugging [thieving] tooth on edge,
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,
With heigh, with heigh, the thrush and the jay!
Are summer songs for me and my aunts [euphemism
for whores],
While we lie tumbling in the hay.
I have served Prince Florizel and in my time wore
three-pile [good velvet], but now I am out
of service [fired].
But shall I go mourn for that, my
dear?
The pale moon shines by night;
And when I wander here and there
I then do most go right.
If tinkers [itinerant handymen] may have leave
to live,
And bear the sow-skin budget [toy bag],
Then my account I well may give,
And in the stocks [punishment for petty
crimes] avouch it.
My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look
to
lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who
being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise
a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die
and drab, I purchased this caparison [outfit], and my
revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock
are too powerful on the highway. Beating and hanging
are terrors to me; for the life to come, I sleep
out the thought of it. A prize, a prize!
Autolycus is unlike anyone else we’ve met in the play. He enters singing, the first song we’ve heard in this dreary play so far. He’s a petty thief who specializes in stealing sheets that country girls spread out to dry on the hedges along the roads, selling his loot for a quart of ale. He assures us it’s a dish for a king, although it’s hard imagining Leontes enjoying it. His little song celebrates the birds, the lark, and flowers, the daffodil, of spring and summer, a welcome change after the bleak winter of Sicilia. He is open about his sexual promiscuity with his doxy and tumbling in the hay with his aunts, unlike the obsessive sexual loathing of Leontes. Autolycus lost his job with Prince Florizel, undoubtedly for being a snapper up of unconsidered trifles, and in his current line of work he runs the risk of being caught and put in the stocks, a form of punishment by public humiliation. (You remember the stocks from your study of the Pilgrim Fathers in grade school?) At least the stocks are not fatal, like the gallows and beatings criminals are likely to receive when they ply their trade on the highway, the big time. Autolycus is content to remain a small-time crook, practicing the silly cheat or petty theft. He may be dressed in rags because of his dissolute life of gambling, die, and prostitutes, drabs, but his father had named him after a thief from classical antiquity, the son of the god Mercury and grandfather of one of literature’s greatest trickster, Ulysses. So he has an impressive heritage to live up to. At line 31 he spots a pigeon.
The next sequence, from line 32 – 50 we are reintroduced to our friend the Clown, the Shepherd’s son. We get an interesting insight into culinary arts in Shakespeare’s time from his shopping list and the economics of raising sheep.
Enter Clown
CLOWN: Let me see, every 'leven wether tods, every
tod
yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen
hundred shorn,
what comes the wool to?
AUTOLYCUS: [Aside] If the springe
[trap] hold, the cock's mine.
CLOWN: I cannot do 't without counters. Let me see,
what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast?
Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,--
what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my
father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays
it on. She hath made me four and twenty nose-gays
for the shearers (three-man song-men all, and very
good ones) but they are most of them means [tenors]
and basses; but one Puritan amongst them, and he
sings psalms to horn-pipes. I must have saffron to
color the warden pies; mace; dates -- none, that's
out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of
ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes,
and as many of raisins
o' the sun.
The Clown tries to figure out what how much money he and his father will make
from the current flock of sheep. The wool from eleven sheep will come to a tod,
a country measurement of 28 pounds. If every tod is worth one pound and odd
shillings and they have 1500 sheep, how much will he make? The answer, a
hefty income for that time! Shakespeare makes no effort to pretend this is
taking place anywhere but in rural England, with the money and the measurements.
Autolycus sees the Clown as a woodcock, a particularly stupid bird, and a rich
one!
Perdita is in charge of the feast held at the sheep-shearing. The shopping list that she has sent with her brother gives us a glimpse of what a well-to-do country family would use in baking for a big bash. Perdita already has the flour from the local grist-mill. She has to send out for sugar, currants, rice, saffron (to color the warden pies made with pears), mace, nutmegs, ginger, prunes and raisins. (Sounds to me like she may have a program on the Food Channel, “Perdita’s Pleasures from the Oven.”) She has already made nosegays for the 24 shearers, a large contingent, all of them skilled in singing songs with three parts, three-man song-men. There is among them only one Puritan, a member of a strict Protestant sect who usually disapproved of any music except unaccompanied church music, but this Puritan is apparently not that strict since he sings psalms to hornpipes.
Autolycus pretends he has been beaten by a thief and robbed and asks the good-hearted Clown for help. He claims he is a rich man with land and living [line 99], and the thing that has most affected him about the robbery is that his clothes taken and he was left these rags to wear. The Clown offers him money, but Autolycus refuses it, even as he is picking the pocket of the good Samaritan. In the next sequence, lines 85 – 112, the Clown asks if he knows who the thief was. Why does Autolycus answer as he does?
CLOWN: What manner of fellow was
he that robbed you?
AUTOLYCUS: A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about
with troll-my-dames [a gambling game, played by women];
I knew him once a servant
of the Prince: I cannot tell, good sir, for which of
his virtues it was, but he was certainly whipped out
of the court.
CLOWN: His vices, you would say; there's no virtue
whipped out of the court; they cherish it to make it
stay there; and yet it will no more but abide [visit].
AUTOLYCUS: Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man
well: he hath been since
an ape-bearer; then a
process-server, a bailiff; then he
compassed a
motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a
tinker's
wife within a mile where my land and living
lies;
and, having flown over many knavish
professions,
he settled only in
rogue: some call him Autolycus.
CLOWN: Out upon him! Prig, for my life, prig! He
haunts
wakes, fairs and bear-baitings.
AUTOLYCUS: Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that's the rogue
that
put me into this apparel.
CLOWN: Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia: if you had
but looked big and spit at him, he'ld have
run.
AUTOLYCUS: I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter: I am
false of heart that way; and that he knew,
I warrant
him.
Autolycus enjoys playing the criminal and toying with his victims, so much so
that when he is asked who has robbed him, he says the culprit was Autolycus!
He identifies himself as a small-time gambler, running a portable gaming scheme
called troll-my-dames, popular before on-line poker. He’s quick to
mention his service with Florizel and then adds sarcastically that he was whipped
out of court for his virtues. Clown lacks any sense of irony and is
a real hayseed, believing that the court fosters virtue, not vice.
The audience in sophisticated London, believing they know the truth about the
worldly excess of the court, would have laughed at this naïve association of
virtue with the court. Autolycus quickly “corrects” himself and then lists
some four other colorful occupations of the robber Autolycus: ape-bearer
(someone who exhibited a monkey for money); process-server, or
rent-a-cop; operator of a puppet show depicting the story of the Prodigal
Son; and finally the husband of tinker’s widow (socially not a very big catch).
Clown knows Autolycus by reputation and calls him a prig or thief, who
hangs out at wakes, fairs and bear-baitings, places where the common
country people might gather. Autolycus agrees and adds with hidden irony that
that was the very man who forced him to wear these rags. Clown assures
him that the thief is a great coward and had he just looked big and spit,
Autolycus would have run away.
After Autolycus fleeces the gullible clown and sends him on his way, he tells us in the sequence from line 121 to 130 he plans to make another visit to the Clown and his friends at the sheep-shearing feast. Notice how he takes the event as a personal challenge to his skills:
Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your
spice.
I'll be with you at your sheep-shearing too; if I
make not this cheat bring out another, and the
shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled [struck from the
book of criminals], and my name put in the book of virtue!
[Sings]
Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent [leap] the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.
Autolycus really does enjoy his work. He will ply his trade if he knows
anyone with money and not a lot of brains is in the neighborhood.
Act IV, Scene 4
This scene is one of the longest in all of the plays. It is a great, sprawling mishmash of 850 lines with nine different plot lines that intertwine, building to the great climax of Act V. All this, plus songs and dances! Notice how many people in this scene are engaged in some kind of masquerade or deception. We’ll examine selected sections of the scene. [Act IV, scene 4]
In the opening sequence we observe the courtship of the two young lovers, Florizel and Perdita. To hide his identity as the crown prince of Bohemia, he has disguised himself as a country swain named Doricles. He is known only to his girlfriend, whom he intends to marry. The shepherd’s daughter, Perdita, is also disguised, as the goddess Flora, in order play the mistress of the feast, but everyone knows she is playing a part, however reluctantly. Despite their obvious love for one another, Perdita is very worried about the social difference between them and what the king would say if he knew of their love. She sees the marriage he insists upon as a union vilely bound up [line 22]. Florizel counters her concern by reminding her that the Greek gods had often humbled themselves to make love to humans, such as Jupiter, Neptune and Apollo. He will respect her honor until they can be married, but she predicts that when the king discovers their love, Florizel will be forced to change and she will lose her life [lines 38 – 39]. He tells her to cheer up to greet the guests for the feast who are arriving and assures her again that he will not assume his princely duties if he does not have her as if wife.
In the beginning of the next sequence, lines 51 – 161, Shepherd urges Perdita to carry out her duties as mistress of the feast in greeting guests, including Polixenes and Camillo in disguise. We in the audience know that Perdita is really a princess, so we will see hints of her hidden royal attributes, although no one else seems to notice. Look for a hint in the Shepherd’s opening speech addressed to his daughter and guests at lines 55 – 70:
Fie, daughter! When my old wife lived, upon
This day, she was both pantler[keeper of the pantry],
butler, cook;
Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served 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 labor and the thing she took to quench it,
She would to each one sip. You are retired [reserved],
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting. Pray you bid
These unknown friends to 's 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.
The Shepherd’s description contrasts how his wife was the life of the party, welcoming the guests to the feast. His daughter seems less comfortable mixing with the guests and behaves more like the person being honored, as might well befit a royal princess.
Perdita welcomes Polixenes and Camillo in their disguise with flowers. The king, at line 77, asks what flowers she is giving out, and this leads to an interesting philosophical discussion about natural creation versus man-made art, in horticulture as well as human beauty:
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 gillyvors
[carnations],
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 over that
art,
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art,
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we
marry
A gentler scion [offspring] 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.
POLIXENES: Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
PERDITA: I'll
not put
The dibble [planting tool] in earth
to set one slip of them;
No more than were I painted [used
cosmetics], I would wish
This youth should say 'twere well, and only
therefore
Desire to breed by me.
The debate here really doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, but it does serve as a foreshadowing of key issues in the rest of the play. Perdita instinctively wants nothing to do with flowers which are not completely natural, and so she rejects the idea of planting gillyvors which have been created by artificial means, by grafting one kind of plant onto another. Polixenes argues that man’s use of such art is simply part of Nature’s grand plan, since man himself is part of Nature. Ironically, Polixenes will object to the idea of creating an artificial princess for his son, that is making Perdita suitable for royal marriage by elevating her in rank. And Perdita, the lowly shepherd girl, who wants to become worthy of such a marriage, objects to a process which could be an analogy of her situation. The true princess intuitively knows that the natural or “real” thing cannot be faked. She counters with an argument about cosmetic beauty not being as good as the natural woman in the final lines above. We’ll see the same issue in the final scene of the play. For a much fuller explanation of this scene see the Introduction to the Signet edition by Frank Kermode on pages lxxiii – lxxvi.
Perdita hands out the flowers she has picked, giving the older men flowers of the late fall. At line 109 Camillo says to her, “I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, /And only live by gazing.” Everyone mentions the lowly country girl’s beguiling beauty. Perdita, at lines 111 –127, describes the flowers of spring she would like to give to her boyfriend and the shepherdesses, linking each flower to a mythological figure. But alas, the season for spring bouquets has passed, and at line 127 she says of her boyfriend,
PERDITA: O,
these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet
friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
FLORIZEL: What,
like a corse [corpse]?
PERDITA: No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,
But quick [alive] and in mine arms.
Come, take your flowers;
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals [folk plays
associated with fertility celebrations];
sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
Perdita’s image of covering her lover with flowers, not like a corpse, but to have him quick, and in mine arms, is a beautiful image of love at the same time it evokes the idea of resurrection. She may play a goddess, almost as if she were in a folk play, but this theme of resurrection will recur later in a serious sense. She is literally the means by which people come back to life.
Perdita’s boyfriend, Florizel, has an equally powerful image to describe her at line 135:
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 are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
Everything that Perdita does is so extraordinary that the love-besotted prince wishes he could hear her speak and sing, even the ordinary activities of life. It is her dancing that causes him to reach new heights of eloquence: he wishes she were like a wave at the seashore, constantly moving but always in place, as if the flow of motion were frozen in the act of moving. She betters everything she does, making her actions queens, expressions of the ideal. (Of course, we know she really is of the royal blood.) Even Florizel’s cranky father is impressed at line 156:
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.
He too senses she is too fine for the home of a humble shepherd.
But not all is harmonious at the feast. Perdita’s brother, Clown, has recently broken up with a country girl named Dorcus and taken up with a girl named Mopsa. Dorcus is not happy about this turn of events, even as the Clown tries to calm the two battling girls at line 162:
DORCAS: Mopsa must be your
mistress: marry, garlic,
To mend her kissing with!
MOPSA: Now,
in good time!
CLOWN: Not a word, a word, we stand upon our
manners.
Come, strike up!
Fortunately a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses begins, temporarily forestalling the fight brewing between the two girls. Shakespeare’s audiences apparently loved short musical interludes, like this song and dance, because they appear in a number of the plays, even the otherwise somber Macbeth.
After the dance Polixenes questions Shepherd about his daughter and her lover. They are truly in love, says Shepherd at line 172: “for never gazed the moon/ Upon the water, as he’ll stand and read, / As ‘twere my daughter’s eyes.” We learn that the old man believes Florizel is named Doricles and that he owns a lot of land somewhere. Perdita’s father hints at line 178, “If young Doricles/ Do light upon her, she shall bring him that/ Which he dreams not of,” referring to that treasure Antigonus left with her.
At line 181 a new sequence begins with the arrival of Autolycus, now disguised as an itinerant peddler. In addition to ribbons and trinkets, he has ballads for sale, which most impress the simple country folks. The Clown’s servant at line 191 describes the peddler’s wares and wants to emphasize that these ballads and other merchandise are of the highest quality:
He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes; no
milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He
has the prettiest love-songs for maids; so without
bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate
burdens [refrains] of dildos [phalluses] and fadings
[indecent references]. “Jump her and thump
her”; and where some stretch-mouthed rascal would,
as it were, mean mischief, and break a foul gap [break for
obscene patter] into
the matter, he makes the maid to answer, “Whoop, do me
no harm, good man”; puts him off, slights him, with
“Whoop, do me no harm, good man.”…….
He hath ribbons of all the colors i' the
rainbow;
points [laces, with pun on legal points], more than all the
lawyers in Bohemia
can learnedly handle, though they come to him by
the
gross: inkles [linen tapes], caddisses [tape for
garters], cambrics, lawns [fine linen].
Why, he sings 'em over, as they were gods or
goddesses; you would think a smock were a she-angel,
he so chants to the sleevehand [cuff], and the
work about the square [embroidered yokes] on 't.
In the first portion above the servant wants to let everyone know that the ballads the peddler has for sale are high-class, without bawdy and with delicate burdens. He then proceeds to describe the contents of the songs, with dildos and fadings and refrains of the maidens crying “Whoop, do me no harm, good man” while the boys chant “Jump her and thump her!” If this is the servant’s idea of a song without bawdy, you can only imagine what he would consider to be a really dirty song. The second portion of the quotation focuses on the ribbons and fabrics the peddler has and the way he sells them, making the merchandise sound as if it were a divinity. (Note the elaborate pun on points and lawyers.)
Autolycus enters at line 230 singing a song which lists some of his wares for sale. His appearance sets off the argument between Mopsa and Dorcus, the present and former girlfriends of Clown. Things quickly get nasty. At line 232 Clown responds to the peddler’s sales pitch:
CLOWN: If I were not in love
with Mopsa, thou shouldst take
no money of me; but being enthralled as I
am, it
will also be the bondage of [cost
me] certain ribbons and gloves.
MOPSA: I was promised them against [before] the
feast, but they come
not too late now.
DORCAS: He hath promised you more than that, or there
be liars.
MOPSA: He hath paid you all he promised you; may be
he has
paid you more, which will shame you to give
him again.
CLOWN: Is there no manners left among maids? Will
they
wear their plackets [slits in
petticoat] where they should bear their
faces? Is there not milking-time, when you
are
going to bed, or kiln-hole [place
for gossip], to whistle off these
secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling
before all
our guests? 'Tis well they are whispering. Clammer
[silence]
your tongues, and not a word more.
Mopsa parades her claim on the Clown by reveling in the ribbons and gloves he will buy her. Dorcas makes a catty remark, suggesting that the Clown had made promises to her, promises that he has now broken. Mopsa retaliates by hinting that Dorcas may be pregnant by her boyfriend, the public knowledge of which would shame her. The Clown, in typical make fashion, says, “ A plague on both your houses,” telling the girls they are, in effect, washing their dirty linen in public, wear their plackets where they should bear their faces. He tells them there are more appropriate places and times to share intimate secrets, while milking the cows, going to bed or gathered around the kiln. He notes that the guests, Polixenes and Camillo, are fortunately not paying attention to his problems but are whispering among themselves.
Autolycus now begins to hype his ballads, each one more improbable than the previous. With each one he assures his potential customers that the events depicted in the song are absolutely true. We realize, seeing this sequence from line 363 on, that before we had Hollywood Star or The National Enquirer, the ballad monger served the same purpose.
Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a
usurer's
wife was brought to bed [gave birth] of twenty money-bags at
a
burden, and how she longed to eat adders' heads and
toads carbonadoed [on a spit] …….
When he is asked if the song is true, he replies at line 270:
Here's the midwife's name to 't, one Mistress
Taleporter [storyteller], and five or six honest wives that
were
present. Why should I carry lies abroad?
Autolycus is indignant that anyone would question the authenticity of his ballad. We see Shakespeare here, as he often did with his sophisticated London audience, making fun of gullible country bumpkins. The second ballad is even more outlandish and is described at line 276:
Here's another ballad, of a fish that appeared
upon
the coast on Wednesday the four-score of April,
forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this
ballad against the hard hearts of maids; it was
thought she was a woman and was turned into a cold
fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that
loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.
The theme of women being punished for not reciprocating a man’s affection is quite common throughout the history of folk music. When he is asked to authenticate the story, Autolycus once again offers documentary proof at line 285: “Five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more/ than my pack will hold.” He has the affidavits of five judges. What more could you want? Autolycus’ prize ballad, however, is the song of “Two Maids Wooing One Man,” which he performs with Mopsa and Dorcas, naturally. Check out the lyrics at line 300 -- 315. What is the underlying message of the song?
Between lines 329 and 346 twelve men disguised as satyrs come in and perform a raucous dance, much to the chagrin of the Shepherd who calls it homely foolery at line 337. Polixenes now approaches his son and asks why he did not buy fancy trifles from the peddler for his love. Florizel’s response turns into a proposal at line 360:
Old sir, I know
She prizes not such trifles as these are;
The gifts she looks from me are packed and locked
Up in my heart, which I have given already,
But not deliver'e. O, hear me breathe my life
Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem,
Hath sometime loved: I take thy hand, this hand
As soft as dove's down, and as white as it,
Or, Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd [blown] snow that's bolted
[sifted]
By the northern blasts [winds] twice o'er --
The gifts Perdita wants from Florizel are in his heart, which he has already given and now he delivers in the preamble of a formal marriage proposal. The elaborate comparison of her hand to the whiteness of a dove, the teeth of an African or snow sifted by the wind is straight out of Petrarch, the Italian poet of romantic love in the Renaissance. Polixenes urges the young man to finish his pronouncement of love, and between lines 372 – 394 the proposal is made and accepted:
POLIXENES: But to your protestation; let
me hear
What you profess.
FLORIZEL: Do, and be
witness to 't.
POLIXENES: And this my neighbor too?
FLORIZEL: And he,
and more
Than he, and men, the earth, the heavens,
and all:
That were I crown'd the most imperial
monarch,
Thereof most worthy; were I the fairest
youth,
That ever made eye swerve; had force and
knowledge
More than was ever man's, I would not prize
them
Without her love; for her, employ them all,
Commend them and condemn them to her
service,
Or to their own perdition.
POLIXENES: Fairly offered.
CAMILLO: This shows a sound affection.
SHEPHERD: But,
my daughter,
Say you the like to him?
PERDITA: I cannot
speak
So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean
better.
By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut
out
The purity of his.
SHEPHERD: Take hands,
a bargain;
And, friends unknown, you shall bear
witness to ’t:
I give my daughter to him, and will make
Her portion equal his.
FLORIZEL: O, that
must be
I' the virtue of your daughter. One being
dead,
I shall have more than you can dream of
yet,
Enough then for your wonder. But, come on,
Contract us 'fore these witnesses.
SHEPHERD: Come,
your hand;
And, daughter, yours.
Florizel welcomes Polixenes and Camillo as witnesses to his declaration of love, in fact everyone – the earth, the heavens, and all. He declares that if he were the worthiest, the best-looking and the smartest of men, he would not value these gifts if he did not have Perdita’s love, and he would use them in her service or see them condemned to perdition. For her part, Perdita pleads she cannot speak as well as her boyfriend, but she uses her own love for him to create the pattern of his love for her. It’s a very charming declaration, and the Shepherd joins their hands as he pronounces his blessing of their union. Perdita’s father hints that Doricles will be surprised when he learns what she will bring to the marriage, the treasure in gold with which she was found, something she doesn’t even know about. For his part Florizel has no expectation more than her virtue, and at line 391 he hints at his own secret, saying that when one person dies (Polixenes), he will have more than the Shepherd can even imagine.
Before the match can be finalized, Polixenes asks Florizel if his father knows and approves of the marriage. At line 398 he argues that a father must be a party to such a momentous decision, if he is still capable of understanding what’s at stake:
Methinks a father
Is at the nuptial of his son a guest
That best becomes the table. Pray you once more,
Is not your father grown incapable
Of reasonable affairs? Is he not stupid
With age and altering rheums? Can he speak, hear?
Know man from man? Dispute his own estate?
Lies he not bed-rid? And again does nothing
But what he did being childish [in his second childhood]?
Despite Polixenes’ pressing, Florizel is adamant that his father not know of the marriage. Between lines 395 and 421, how many times does the prince ignore the question or deny that his father should know? At line 421 the father reveals his true identity and puts an end to the marriage business in the most brutal manner:
Mark your divorce, young sir, [revealing
himself]
Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base
To be acknowledged. Thou, a sceptre's heir,
That thus affect'st [loved] a sheep-hook [shepherd’s
crook, a derogatory reference]!
Thou, old traitor [to the Shepherd] ,
I am sorry that by hanging thee, I can
But shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece
Of excellent witchcraft [to Perdita], who of force must know
The royal fool thou copest with [was involved with]--
I'll have thy beauty scratch'd with briers, and made
More homely than thy state. For thee, fond [silly] boy,
If I may ever know thou dost but sigh
That thou no more shalt see this knack [trifle] -- as never
I mean thou shalt -- we'll bar thee from succession;
Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin,
Far than Deucalion off [you’ll be a very distant relative]. Mark
thou my words.
Follow us to the court. Thou, churl, for this time,
Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee
From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment,
Worthy enough a herdsman -- yea him, too,
That makes himself, but for our honor therein,
Unworthy thee -- if ever henceforth thou
These rural latches to his entrance open,
Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,
I will devise a death as cruel for thee
As thou art tender to 't.
Earlier in the scene Polixenes had praised Perdita’s beauty and grace. But marriage, particularly at the royal level, was too important to leave to lovers, and so the king ends the hopes of the youngsters with absolute finality. First he lets his son know how disappointed he is that he has sought to replace his scepter, the symbol of royal rule, with a sheep-hook, the tool of a lowly shepherd, He devastates the Shepherd, who is totally surprised by the revelation that he just approved the marriage of his daughter to the royal prince, with a threat that he will hang him immediately. To Perdita he is particularly cruel, telling her he will have her beauty destroyed. Beginning at line 430 he warns everyone of his final judgment. If he catches Florizel even pining for his lost love, the king will disinherit him and bar him from succession. He pardons the Shepherd for the moment, while making it abundant clear that he is displeased. Finally he warns Perdita that if she ever has anything more to do with Florizel, who has made himself unworthy even of her, if she ever opens the door latch or hoops him in an embrace, he will devise tortures for her death that will be as cruel as she is tender. The only other person in this play to threaten tortures is Leontes. In a way, Polixenes has become the unreasonable tyrant of the second half of the play.
Polixenes angrily stomps out, and Perdita and the Shepherd voice their reactions in very different ways, beginning with Perdita at line 445:
Even here undone!
I was not much afeard; for once or twice
I was about to speak and tell him plainly,
The selfsame sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike. Will 't please you, sir, be gone?
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.
Perdita’s reaction is at first an admirable kind of defiance: she wanted to answer the king, tell him that the sun shines on her cottage as well as the palace (with the implication that simple people experience the same loves and frustrations as those at court). I say this is admirable because it’s another piece of evidence of her inherent royalty coming through – she is not cowed by Polixenes. But she knew along that this is how their love would end. She urges Florizel to leave and take care; as for herself, she will queen it no inch further. She had allowed herself to dream of becoming a princess and then a queen. Now she will be content to milk her ewes and weep.
At line 456 the Shepherd is not defiant but angry at the kids. He cannot attack Florizel directly as the prince, but he lets him know how his deceptions have put him in danger. He saves his anger for his daughter, who is sure to have known what was going on:
O
sir,
You have undone a man of fourscore three,
That thought to fill his grave in quiet, yea,
To die upon the bed my father died,
To lie close by his honest bones; but now
Some hangman must put on my shroud, and lay me
Where no priest shovels in dust. O cursed wretch,
That knew'st this was the prince, and wouldst adventure
[risk]
To mingle faith with him! Undone, undone!
If I might die within this hour, I have lived
To die when I desire.
The Shepherd tells the prince what is at stake for him. His hope for a natural death and honorable burial near his ancestors has been thwarted by the Florizel’s romantic game. If he were to be hanged, he would have no last rites ministered, except by the hangman, and his body would not be buried in the churchyard. He shows his anger to Perdita, calling her a cursed wretch and then he stomps out.
At line 465 Florizel remains adamant about his promise to marry Perdita:
Why look you so upon me?
I am but sorry, not afeard; delayed,
But nothing altered. What I was, I am;
More straining on, for plucking back; not following
My leash unwillingly.
Florizel is more resolved than ever. He will not reluctantly follow his father like a dog on a leash but will pursue his own course with Perdita. Camillo now exposes his identity and advises the prince to stay away from court until his father has had a chance to settle down. The three discuss their current situation, beginning at line 477:
PERDITA: How often have I told you
'twould be thus?
How often said, my dignity would last
But till 'twere known?
FLORIZEL: It cannot
fail, but by
The violation of my faith, and then
Let nature crush the sides o' the earth
together,
And mar the seeds within, Lift up thy
looks:
From my succession wipe me, father; I
Am heir to my affection.
CAMILLO: Be
advised.
FLORIZEL: I am, and by my fancy; if my reason
Will thereto be obedient, I have reason;
If not, my senses better pleased with
madness,
Do bid it welcome.
CAMILLO: This is
desperate, sir.
FLORIZEL: So call it, but it does fulfill my vow;
I needs must think it
honesty. Camillo,
Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may
Be thereat glean'd; for all the sun sees or
The close earth wombs or the profound sea
hide
In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
To this my fair beloved.
Perdita again reminds her lover that she knew their affair would end like this when the king discovered that she was low-born, that is she lacks dignity. Florizel defies his father’s injunction and the demands of the throne, saying to give her up would be a violation of my faith. Should he violate the oath he has made to her, he calls up Nature to crush the world and the seeds within, that is any chance of regeneration. As your footnote makes clear, Florizel here echoes two of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic heroes – Macbeth and King Lear, both of whom call for universal destruction in very different circumstances. When Camillo urges the prince to think about what’s he’s doing, Florizel assures him he is. If his rational mind will accept his emotional love, his fancy, then he will keep his reason; if it won’t, then he prefers the madness of love’s excess. When Camillo tries to get him to change his mind, Florizel reminds him he has taken an oath to Perdita. He would willingly give up his claim to the throne. At line 492 he makes a powerful reaffirmation, saying not for Bohemia and all the pomp of being king, nor for all the sun sees or the secret earth hides, as if in a womb, nor for what lies beneath the profound sea would he consider breaking his vow.
Florizel tells Camillo he plans to elope with Perdita by a nearby ship and go where they can be married and live in peace. When he hears of this plan, Camillo, at line 511 remembers an earlier plan of his own, to engineer a return to Sicilia and Leontes:
He's
irremovable,
Resolved for flight. Now were I happy if
His going I could frame to serve my turn,
Save him from danger, do him love and honor,
Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia,
And that unhappy king, my master, whom
I so much thirst to see.
We can see here the beginnings of the plot line which will lead to a resolution of at least some of the tragedy of the first three acts. At line 535 Camillo promises the young couple that he will try and pacify Polixenes’ anger, especially after they marry. Having won their confidence, he now advises them to sail to Sicilia and seek the help of Leontes, who will be so grateful to see the son of his former best friend, he will do everything he can to help the young couple. It’s good advice, albeit offered for an ulterior motive. Florizel will pretend to be an ambassador from Polixenes, using intimate information which Camillo will furnish. All that remains is how to smuggle the prince and Perdita aboard ship without arousing an alarms.
At that point, line 599, Autolycus, back to wearing his ragged clothes and without the phony beard he wore as the peddler, enters, exulting in the success of his criminal activities:
Ha, ha, what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his
sworn brother, a very simple gentleman. I have sold
all my trumpery: not a counterfeit stone, not a
ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book [notebook], ballad,
knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring [ring made
of horn, often thought to have magical
powers],
to keep my pack from fasting. They throng who
should buy first, as if my trinkets had been
hallowed [were made sacred]and brought a benediction to the
buyer;
by which means I saw whose purse was best in
picture [fullest], and what I saw to my good use I
remembered. My clown, who wants but something to
be a reasonable man, grew so in love with the
wenches' song, that he would not stir his pettitoes [slang
for feet]
till he had both tune and words; which so drew the
rest of the herd to me that all their other senses
stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket, it
was senseless; 'twas nothing to geld a codpiece [cut an
ornamental pouch worn in men’s crotches]of a
purse; I could have filed keys off that hung in
chains. No hearing, no feeling, but my sir's [the Clown’s]
song,
and admiring the nothing of it. So that in this
time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their
festival purses; and had not the old man come in
with a hubbub against his daughter and the king's
son, and scared my choughs [crows] from the chaff
[worthless trash], I had not
left a purse alive in the whole army.
Autolycus is up to his old tricks, picking pockets while his victims are distracted, the same thing he had done to the Clown on the road. In addition, he made money on the trinkets that he sold to the throng of culturally deprived country bumpkins. The list of items sold is really fascinating. It gives you an idea where the original QVC Home Shopping network got its start. Now he has reverted to his original clothes. So it comes as a shock when Camillo, Perdita and his old boss, Florizel, suddenly take an interest in him. At first, line 631, he’s afraid they overheard his confession and will hang him. Then at line 638 he’s shocked when Camillo asks him to exchange clothes with the prince, who is dressed relatively well. The advisor wants to hide the eloping couple’s identity, so he even offers Autolycus money to go ahead with the exchange at line 641. Even Perdita is given Florizel’s hat and told to go off and hide her appearance. Autolycus cannot believe his good luck!
At line 666 Camillo lets us in on his long-range plan:
[Aside] What I do next, shall be to tell the King
Of this escape and whither they are bound;
Wherein my hope is, I shall so prevail
To force him after; in whose company
I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight
I have a woman's longing.
So Camillo’s supposed altruistic action in helping the young couple actually is done to betray their secret and gain his own ends. After the conspirators leave at line 674, Autolycus weighs in on his reaction to the planned escape of Florizel and Perdita:
I understand the business, I hear it. To have an
open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is
necessary for a cutpurse; a good nose is requisite
also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see
this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive.
What an exchange [trade of clothes] had this been
without boot [additional money]! What
a boot [he’s got new footwear] is here with this exchange!
Sure, the gods do
this year connive at [wink at] us, and we may do anything
extempore [without planning]. The Prince himself is about a
piece of
iniquity -- stealing away from his father, with his
clog [girlfriend] at his heels; if I thought it were a piece
of
honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not
do 't. I hold it the more knavery to conceal it;
and therein am I constant to my profession.
This is a fascinating revelation! Camillo, the “virtuous “ government official, is fully prepared to rat out the prince for his own ends; Autolycus, the professional criminal, won’t tell, even though he could make more money. He considers helping his old employer with his silence as an act of greater knavery.
At that point, line 688, in comes his favorite pigeon, the Clown, and the Shepherd. Autolycus immediately sees a chance to make even more money as he hides to overhear their conversation: “Aside, aside; here is more matter for a hot brain. / Every lane's end, every shop, church, session, / hanging, yields a careful man work.” Even if he wanted to go straight, every occasion presents him with more opportunities to make money illegally. Notice what he lists as places to make a crooked shilling, every place from church to a hanging. Pickpockets, or as they were called in Shakespeare’s day, cutpurses, loved a good public execution, even if it were another cutpurse, because people got so fascinated by the hanging they never noticed their purses being lifted!
Alarmed by the king’s threat to execute anyone involved in the “conspiracy” of marrying Perdita to Florizel, the Clown is urging his father at line 692 to tell the authorities that she really isn’t their relative but a changeling. As he says at line 697, “your flesh and blood has not offended the king.” At line 714 Autolycus realizes that this revelation might endanger the elopement, so he takes off his fake beard and plays his third different deception in this scene, an arrogant courtier. He has the clothes for the part from Florizel, and he was around the court long enough to learn the language and the attitude. At line 718 he steps out of hiding and into the part:
AUTOLYCUS: How now, rustics
[bumpkins]! whither are you bound?
SHEPHERD: To the palace, an it like your worship.
AUTOLYCUS: Your affairs there, what, with whom, the
condition
of that fardel [bundle with
documents left with the baby], the place of
your dwelling, your
names, your ages, of what having
[property], breeding, and any
thing that is fitting to be known,
discover.
Autolycus really has the authority scam down pat, asking for 11 pieces of information in just five lines. He certainly has the rustics fooled, who immediately address him as your worship, assuming he is a high ranking nobleman. Autolycus really wants to get his hands on the documents in the package they are carrying. At line 733 the Shepherd asks for confirmation of his identity. The following passage is a marvelous satiric piece on the exaggerated behavior of courtly gentlemen, at least as they were perceived by the rest of society:
SHEPHERD: Are you a courtier, an 't
like you, sir?
AUTOLYCUS: Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest
thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings[clothes]?
Hath not my gait in it the measure [stately
tread] of the court?
Receives not thy nose court-odor from me? Reflect
I
not on thy baseness court-contempt? Thinkest
thou,
for that I insinuate, or toaze [tease]
from thee thy
business, I am therefore no courtier? I am
courtier
cap-a-pe [head-to-foot]; and one
that will either push on or pluck
back thy business there: whereupon I
command thee to
open thy affair.
SHEPHERD: My business, sir, is to the king.
AUTOLYCUS: What advocate hast thou to him?
SHEPHERD: I know not, an 't like you.
CLOWN: Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant;
say you
have none.
SHEPHERD: None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.
AUTOLYCUS: How blessed are we that are not simple men!
Yet nature might have made me as these are,
Therefore I will not disdain.
CLOWN: This cannot be but a great courtier.
SHEPHERD: His garments are rich, but he wears
them not handsomely.
CLOWN: He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical.
A great man, I'll warrant; I know by the
picking
on's teeth.
AUTOLYCUS: The fardel there? What's i' the
fardel?
Wherefore that box?
Something about Autolycus just doesn’t seem right to the Shepherd, hence his question at line 733. Autolycus, the master of disguise, responds with what he thinks people think of when they meet the members of a country’s elite who were drawn to court by the desire for power and influence. He asserts that he has the air of the court in these enfoldings; he moves in the artificial and stylized gait and gestures of the court; he is perfumed, a common practice among courtly gentlemen. Most telling, he treats these rustics with contempt which is a sure sign he is a courtier! Just because he questions them to tease out their business doesn’t mean he’s not a courtier; information was the lifeblood of those at court -- it’s how they made their livings! He resents the question. He is a courtier from head to foot, only he uses the fancy French phrase, cap-a-pe. As an intimate at court, he is like a lobbyist in our time: he can block things or make them happen in the halls of power. The Shepherd is not convinced and at line 744 won’t reveal their business. So the con-man asks who their advocate is. Shepherd has no idea what the word means, so his son guesses that advocate is a reference to the small bribe that people used to offer judges hearing a case, often a pheasant among country people, so the Shepherd at line 749 admits that he has no advocate, neither cock or hen. At line 750 Autolycus thanks the gods he is not as simple as these men but declares he will not disdain them because of their ignorance, even as he is doing just that by his patronizing remark, the sure sign of a courtier! The Clown is convinced, but the Shepherd, being older and wiser, still sees something phony about the great gentleman: he does not wear his rich garments handsomely. But the Clown demurs, observing that the fact that he is acting fantastical, that is, over the top, proves he is a courtier, as does the fact that he picks his teeth, a custom of polite society that had just come into vogue. The con-man now reiterates his central question: what is in the fardel, the package with the documents, and what is in the box, probably the same container that held the “fairy gold” back in III, 2.
When the Shepherd once again refuses to divulge his secrets to anyone other that the King, Autolycus changes his tactic, telling the rustics the King has boarded a ship. He now uses threat to raise the pressure on them to open up. Pretending not to know who they are, at line 773, Autolycus expands on the threat that Polixenes had originally made, and then withdrew, and then extends the danger to the Clown, the weak link:
AUTOLYCUS: If that shepherd be not in hand-fast
[custody], let him fly;
the curses he shall have, the tortures he
shall
feel, will break the back of man, the heart
of monster.
CLOWN: Think you so, sir?
AUTOLYCUS: Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy
and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane
[related] to
him, though removed fifty times, shall all
come
under the hangman; which, though it be
great pity,
yet it is necessary. An old sheep-whistling
rogue, a
ram-tender, to offer to have his daughter
come into
grace [marry into royalty]! Some say
he shall be stoned; but that death
is too soft for him, say I. Draw our throne
into a
sheep-cote! All deaths are too few, the
sharpest too easy.
CLOWN: Has the old man e'er a son, sir, do you hear,
an 't
like you, sir?
AUTOLYCUS: He has a son -- who shall be flayed alive, then
'nointed over with honey, set on the head
of a
wasp's nest; then stand till he be three
quarters
and a dram dead; then recovered again with
aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion;
then, raw as
he is, and in the hottest day prognostication
[weather forecast]
proclaims, shall he be set against a
brick-wall, the
sun looking with a southward eye upon him,
where he
is to behold him with flies blown to death.
But what
talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose
miseries
are to be smiled at, their offences being
so
capital? Tell me, for you seem to be honest
plain
men, what you have to the King; being
something
gently considered [a trained
gentleman], I'll bring you where he is
aboard, tender your persons to his
presence [introduce you],
whisper him in your behalfs; and if it be
in man
besides the King to effect your suits, here
is man
shall do it.
CLOWN: He seems to be of great authority: close
with him [hire him],
give him gold; and though authority be a
stubborn
bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with
gold. Show
the inside of your purse to the outside of
his hand,
and no more ado. Remember -- stoned, and
flayed alive.
Despite Polixenes’ change of heart, the rustics are terrified of punishment. The Clown’s fear, especially after hearing about the elaborate torture planned for the son of the ram-tender, is rendered comically. However, Perdita’s father is also worried and is fully prepared to reveal the secret of his daughter’s origins, regardless of the consequences on the “fairy gold” or his adopted daughter’s psyche. The old man is all too human. The gothic torture description strikes us as so overdone we probably laugh at it. However, in this time criminals found guilty of serious capital offense against the monarch were usually executed in long, painful and cruel ways, executions which were created by the royal hangman who prided himself on his ability to draw out the process of death to please the authorities. Behind the satire is a serious social phenomenon.
The deal is struck. Autolycus will get the two on the same ship as the prince and Perdita and will rely on Florizel’s authority to find out what is in the fardel and gather a nice reward for himself in the process. After he excuses himself to urinate at line 832, look upon the hedge, the con-man lays out for us his plan at line 838:
If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune
would
not suffer me: she drops booties [plunder] in my mouth. I am
courted now with a double occasion – gold, and a means
to do the prince my master good; which who knows how
that may turn back to my advancement? I will bring
these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him. If he
think it fit to shore them again, and that the
complaint they have to the king concerns him
nothing, let him call me rogue for being so far
officious; for I am proof against that title, and
what shame else belongs to 't. To him will I present
them, there may be matter in it.
Autolycus can’t believe how much money he has received in the course of this one scene. How many different ways did he make money in this scene? His success is a result of his ability to play-act. How many characters in this scene, not counting the peasants who dressed as satyrs, play-acted in the course of the scene? In how many of these cases was the play-acting done to deceive another character? How many characters played more than a single masquerade? You have the following characters to choose from:
* Florizel
* Perdita
* Shepherd
* Clown
* Polixenes
* Camillo
* Autolycus
* Mopsa
* Dorcas
Act V, Scene 1
In the final act the various threads come together but in unexpected ways. The principal theme is to show us how some unnamed higher power – Fate? God? Coincidence? – maneuvers the lives of the characters in order to restore some kind of cosmic balance.
In the first scene we meet Leontes and observe the psychological grip that Paulina has on his life. Then the arrival of Florizel and Perdita, followed closely by Polixenes and Camillo, brings things to a startling climax. [Act V, scene 1]
In the opening sequence, lines 1 – 24, a political struggle is going on among the people who surround King Leontes. As is often the case in such conflicts, the issue is not immediately apparent. What is at stake? What are the positions of the two sides struggling over Leontes’ future? Why is the issue important? On one side we have two prominent courtiers, Cleomenes and Dion who brought the message from the oracle. They are urging Leontes, after 16 years of grieving, to forget your evil/ With them forgive yourself [lines 5-6]. But Leontes still remembers his sweetest companion and his blemishes that led to her death and left the kingdom without an heir. Paulina is determined that he not forget. At line 15 she remind him that if he took the virtues of all the women in the world and made a single perfect women, she you/ Killed would be unparalleled. Leontes is once again filled with remorse and acknowledges his guilt, even as he asks Paulina, Say so but seldom. (You have a feeling that she has reminded one way or another every day of the last 16 years!) Cleomenes rebukes Paulina and tells her at line 21 that she might have spoken a thousand things that would/ Have done the time more benefit.” She cuts to the chase and reveals the hidden political issue at stake: You are one of those/ Would have him wed again.
In a speech at lines 24 – 34 Dion acknowledges the position of the courtiers and shows why it is so important. It’s not just the humane thing to do for a man who has suffered the depth of despair; it is a very practical issue for the country. Why might Paulina oppose it?
If you would not so
[encourage him to remarry],
You pity not the state, nor the remembrance
Of his most sovereign name; consider little
What dangers, by his highness' fail of issue,
May drop upon his kingdom, and devour
Incertain lookers on [bystanders incapable of action]. What
were more holy
Than to rejoice the former queen is well [peaceful in
death]?
What holier than, for royalty's repair,
For present comfort, and for future good,
To bless the bed of majesty again
With a sweet fellow to 't?
Shakespeare’s audience knew firsthand the perils of a monarch dying with no heir. In such a situation there was always uncertainty and the threat of civil conflict or foreign invasion. Without disrespecting the memory of Hermione, Leontes could marry again and produce an heir to save the kingdom from dangers. But Paulina is adamant that Leontes cannot marry again because he will never be able to find a match for his dead wife. Besides the oracle said that Leontes would live without an heir unless that which was lost was found again. In Paulina’s speech, lines 34 – 49, what does she think the odds are of finding the lost baby? What political alternative does she propose for the issue of not having an heir? What additional reason might she have for opposing a second marriage?
There is none worthy,
Respecting [compared to] her that's gone; besides, the gods
Will have fulfill'd their secret purposes;
For has not the divine Apollo said --
Is 't not the tenor [message] of his oracle --
That King Leontes shall not have an heir
Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall,
Is all as monstrous to our human reason
As my Antigonus to break his grave,
And come again to me; who, on my life,
Did perish with the infant. 'Tis your counsel [advice]
My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
Oppose against their wills. [To LEONTES] Care not for
issue;
The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander
Left his to the worthiest; so his successor
Was like to be the best.
Paulina clearly doesn’t think the lost child will be found; it is as likely that Antigonus would return home suddenly. After 16 years his wife is sure he and the baby died. She warns the courtiers not to urge Leontes to violate the will of Apollo; without going into detail she reminds them what happened last time he did that. Then she reassures Leontes not to worry about an heir. Alexander the Great, the most powerful king the world has ever seen, simply left his kingdom to the most worthy of his followers. Of course, we know Paulina has a little surprise hidden away that makes the question of remarriage moot.
Leontes is once again overcome with remorse and concludes at line 56, No more such wives [as Hermione], therefore no wife. He and Paulina engage in a rather macabre discussion of how Hermione’s ghost might return to haunt a second wife and how Leontes would be tempted to murder such an interloper. We realize that the adamancy of Paulina and discussion of the spirit of Hermione returning are all subtle preparations for the final scene. Finally Paulina gets the king to swear that he will never remarry unless she approves of his choice. She warns Leontes that should she choose another, the woman would not be young but rather the age Hermione would have been if she had not died. Then at line 83 she seems to forestall any remarriage, saying it can only happen when the former queen breathes again.
In the next sequence, line 85 – 123, news comes of the arrival of Prince Florizel and his new bride. Leontes is overjoyed but bothered about the circumstances of the visit. Why? Leontes immediately sees significance in how the prince has arrived. At line 88 he articulates what it means:
LEONTES: What with him? He comes not
Like to his father's greatness; his
approach,
So out of circumstance, and sudden, tells
us
'Tis not a visitation framed, but forced
By need and accident. What train?
GENTLEMAN: But
few,
And those but mean.
The visit of royalty should have been properly announced and carefully planned. This sudden appearance suggests that it is a forced visit and is confirmed by the fact that the prince is accompanied by few servants and those of lower status. The son of mighty King Polixenes should not appear like this.
Throughout the play up to this point men have extolled the beauty of Perdita. None of them exceeds the praise of the nameless servant who brings word of the arrival. The following are four of the instances in this sequence:
his princess, she
The fairest I have yet beheld, [lines 86-87]
Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
That e'er the sun shone bright on. [lines 94-95]
This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else, make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow. [lines 106-109]
Women will love her, that she is a woman
More worth than any man; men, that she is
The rarest of all women. [lines 111-112]
We can see how the praise of Perdita grows from being just her physical attractiveness to the hyperbole that she is godlike, the idealization of women, the object of worship for men. Paulina, as we might expect, quickly evokes the memory of Hermione as the nonpareil of womanhood and chides the servant for his praise, reminding him at line 100 of a line of poetry he had written about the dead queen: She had not been/ Nor was not to be equaled. The servant replies that once Paulina sees Florizel’s princess, she too will be won over. At line 115 she reminds everyone that the departed Mamillius and Florizel were the same age. Leontes is once again remorseful and asks Paulina at line 123 not to make any comments about his deceased family members while he is talking with Florizel, for fear that her reminders will unfurnish me of reason.
In the next sequence, lines 124-178, Florizel and Perdita arrive. Notice how the prince makes excuses and deceives Leontes about the circumstances of their visit. How do you account for Leontes’ reactions throughout this section?
LEONTES: Your mother was most true
to wedlock, prince,
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one,
Your father's image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you
brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us performed before. Most dearly
welcome!
And your fair princess--goddess! Oh, alas!
I lost a couple that 'twixt heaven and
earth
Might thus have stood begetting wonder as
You, gracious couple, do. And then I lost--
All mine own folly -- the society,
Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
Though bearing misery, I desire my life
Once more to look on him.
FLORIZEL: By his
command
Have I here touched Sicilia, and from him
Give you all greetings that a king, at
friend [in friendship],
Can send his brother; and but infirmity,
Which waits upon worn times, hath something
seized
His wished ability, he had himself
The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and
his
Measured to look upon you; whom he loves
(He bade me say so) more than all the
sceptres
And those that bear them living.
LEONTES: O
my brother --
Good gentleman! -- the wrongs I have done
thee stir
Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
So rarely kind, are as interpreters
Of my behindhand slackness. Welcome hither,
As is the spring to the earth! And hath he
too
Exposed this paragon to the fearful usage,
At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,
To greet a man not worth her pains, much
less
The adventure of [risks to] her
person? …..
The
blessed gods
Purge all infection from our air whilst you
Do climate here! You have a holy father,
A graceful [virtuous] gentleman,
against whose person,
So sacred as it is, I have done sin:
For which, the heavens, taking angry note,
Have left me issueless; and your father's
blessed,
As he from heaven merits it, with you,
Worthy his goodness. What might I have
been,
Might I a son and daughter now have look'd
on,
Such goodly things as you!
Under the circumstances, Leontes’ greeting in the first seven lines seems a little strange. It is as if he were saying, “Your mother was obviously loyal to her wedding vows, since you so closely resemble your father, a man I tried to have murdered under the mistaken belief he had impregnated my wife, whom I have subsequently destroyed along with my children.” Or maybe, it’s just that is on his mind! At line 131 like everyone else, he calls Perdita goddess, and then, without prompting from Paulina, the sight of this royal couple reminds him of his missing son and daughter. (Ironically, he is not far wrong: they are his daughter and son-in-law to be.) At line 135 he acknowledges the responsibility for his losses and the loss of his friendship with Polixenes, whom he longs to see again. Seizing on his heartfelt desire, Florizel declares at line 138 that his father has sent him to see Leontes in friendship and apologizes for not coming in person, but he is advanced in years. At line 147 Leontes expresses remorse for his actions toward his old friend which have made this gesture of friendship in his son’s visit all the more powerful. Leontes is particularly impressed that Florizel would have brought along his wife, a paragon, risking her life on a sea voyage, which was always dangerous.
At lines 156 – 168 Florizel now makes up an elaborate story to account for Perdita’s presence and the fact that they have just dropped in for an unannounced visit: Perdita is his bride, the daughter of the king of Libya, and they are on the way back to Bohemia. The prince has sent the rest of his entourage ahead while he stops in Sicilia to pay his respects. Sounds plausible! In his speech at lines 168 – 178 Leontes once again, and with eloquence, wishes them welcome and acknowledges his sin against Florizel’s graceful father, in retribution for which the gods have left him without an heir. He ends once again wishing his children had lived to look on this royal couple.
In the final sequence of this scene, lines 178 – 233 a servant arrives with a message from Polixenes himself, who has just landed in Sicilia and asks Leontes to attach or arrest his son, guilty of having cast off his duty and his dignity by eloping with Perdita. The king has just run into the Shepherd and Clown. (We have been wondering what had happened to them, since the last time we saw them they were going to board the ship with Florizel where Autolycus thought the prince could discover the secret of the fardel.) Camillo is questioning the pair at line 197:
Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now
Has these poor men in question. Never saw I
Wretches so quake; they kneel, they kiss the earth;
Forswear [contradict] themselves as often as they speak.
Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them
With divers deaths in death [various tortures to the death].
Based on what we saw in the preceding scene, we can imagine the rustics, finally confronted by the king, falling all over themselves to deny any kinship with Perdita. And we can see the impatient Polixenes, unwilling to listen to them, threatening horrible tortures, which only makes them less coherent. And, of course, their advocate, Autolycus, is no where to be seen. At line 205 Leontes asks Florizel if he and Perdita are married: “We are not, sir, nor are we like to be./ The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first./ The odds for high and low's alike.” The image here of the stars kissing the valleys before they can succeed in getting married is poetic, and it also gives us some idea of the frustration they feel. The last line here seems to mean, “Fortune is a cheat who beguiles the prince and the shepherd alike with her false dice.” At line 218 Florizel, desperate, asks Leontes to become an advocate for the couple with Polixenes, assuring the king that he only need request a favor from his friend to have it granted. Instead, at line 223, Leontes makes a strange response:
LEONTES: Would he do so, I'd beg
your precious mistress,
Which he counts but a trifle.
PAULINA: Sir,
my liege,
Your eye hath too much youth in 't; not a month
'Fore your queen died, she was more worth
such gazes
Than what you look on now.
LEONTES: I
thought of her,
Even in these looks I made.
Here we are right on the brink of the great revelation, if Camillo can only sort out the story of the rustics, and Shakespeare is milking the suspense for all it’s worth! Florizel wants Leontes to help him out, but the king suddenly seems to want Perdita for himself. (Just the littlest hint of incest, which is found in several of the other romances as well.) Paulina, the pit bull, quickly reminds the king that Hermione was better looking, and Leontes confesses that the sight of this girl reminded him of his dead wife. The scene ends with Leontes promising to appeal to Polixenes on behalf of the young couple.
Act V, Scene 2
The entire play has been building to this point. Leontes is about to be reunited with the daughter he thought he had lost. Apollo’s oracle will be fulfilled. Some measure Leontes’ former life will be restored. And yet, after building the suspense to a fever pitch, Shakespeare does something very strange – he withholds the emotional payoff. Rather than the joyful father and daughter reunion or the vindication of the elopement, with all the attendant emotional payoff, the dramatist denies us all these pleasures. Instead we, along with Autolycus, have to settle for second-hand accounts of what happens. [Act V, scene 2]
In the first 120 lines poor Autolycus receives the account of the reunion and revelations from three gentlemen, each of whom witnessed a portion and all of whom say, in effect, “You really should have been there!” The first gentleman was present long enough to hear the Shepherd confirm that he had found the baby. He then describes the reunion of Leontes and Camillo at line 14:
There was speech in their dumbness,
language
in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard
of a world ransomed, or one destroyed. A notable
passion of wonder appeared in them.
This is a wonderful description of two men overcome with the emotion of the moment who communicate wordlessly. A second gentleman at line 24 adds the next element, the reunion of father and daughter and its significance:
The oracle is fulfilled; the
king's daughter is found; such a deal of wonder is
broken out within this hour that ballad-makers
cannot be able to express it.
The key thing for the country is that the oracle is fulfilled. It’s amusing to compare this genuine miracle, which we’re told would defy the ability of ballad-makers, with the “enhanced” ballads that Autolycus sold back in Act IV, scene 4. A third gentleman now comes in and adds more details, including at lines 35 – 42 the circumstantial evidence supporting the identity of Perdita: the baby was wrapped in the mantle of Hermione and had a jewel of the queen around her neck; the letter of Antigonus, whose handwriting had been authenticated; Perdita’s resemblance to her mother and her natural royalty in bearing. Then we get the description of the reconciliation of the two kings at lines 45 – 55, delivered in the kind of elaborate, flowery language of the court we saw back in the first scene of the play. At lines 58 – 62 we get a sense of this formal diction in the description of Leontes’ expressing gratitude to the Shepherd:
Now he thanks the old
shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten
conduit [fountain] of many kings' reigns [a pun on
tears like rain]. I never heard of such
another encounter, which lames report to follow it,
and undoes description to do it.
The last sentence here is just one of many places in this sequence where characters remind us how much we missed by not witnessing all of these events. Evidence of the fate of Antigonus is offered at lines 65 – 70, rings and a handkerchief, saved by the Clown whose simple good-heartedness is now cited as proof that he is incapable of deception. The disappearance of the ship and crew who brought Antigonus to Bohemia is confirmed by the Shepherd, explaining why all connection was lost for 16 years. Finally we have the description of Perdita learning of her mother’s fate at lines 88 – 99 where we are once again reminded that anyone witnessing this would have been moved: “Who was most marble there changed/ color; some swooned, all sorrowed./ If all the world could have seen 't, the woe had been universal.” Unfortunately the outside world, including us, was not allowed to see this drama. Why has Shakespeare shut us out, even as he continues to remind us of what we have missed? Can you think of any dramatic reason to justify this artistic decision?
At line 101 the third gentleman now tells us the royal party has adjourned to Paulina’s house, preparing us for the final scene. Notice what this description of the statue of Hermione emphasizes about what we’ll see:
the princess hearing of her mother's statue,
which is in the keeping of Paulina -- a piece many
years in doing and now newly performed by that rare
Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself
eternity and could put breath into his work, would
beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her
ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione, that
they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of
answer. Thither with all greediness of affection
are they gone, and there they intend to sup.
Julio Romano is just one more anachronism found in this play supposedly set in the ancient world. A painter of the late Italian Renaissance, his inclusion here reminds us that the pictorial art of the Renaissance did indeed emphasize realism in the depicting of the human figure. The complicated sentence in the middle of this passage is saying that if Romano, like God, had eternity and the ability to create life, he would rival Nature in the creating of creatures that seem alive. Hermione’s statue is so lifelike that people reportedly speak to it and wait for an answer. Leontes and his daughter, hungry with love for the dead Queen, have gone to feed on the illusion of life in art. The second gentleman at lines 112—116 reveals that Paulina has been very secretive about what is going on at her house. The gentlemen go off to see the event, leaving poor Autolycus.
Our con-man is out of the loop for a change. In the sequence at lines 121 –167 he explains to us why his plan to provide Florizel with the information from the rustics failed. Then he is confronted with the Shepherd and Clown who have been transformed. What has happened to change them?
AUTOLYCUS: Now, had I not the dash
[stain] of my former life in me,
would preferment drop on my head. I brought
the old
man and his son aboard the Prince; told him
I heard
them talk of a fardel and I know not what;
but he
at that time overfond of the shepherd's
daughter,
(so he then took her to be), who began to
be much
seasick, and himself little better;
extremity of
weather continuing, this mystery remained
undiscovered. But 'tis all one to me; for
had I
been the finder out of this secret, it
would not
have relished [fit] among my other
discredits. [Enter Shepherd and Clown]
Here come those I have done good to against
my will,
and already appearing in the blossoms of
their fortune.
SHEPHERD: Come, boy, I am past moe [more] children;
but thy sons and
daughters will be all gentlemen born.
CLOWN: You are well met, sir. You denied to fight
with me
this other day, because I was no gentleman
born.
See you these clothes? Say you see them not
and
think me still no gentleman born; you were
best say
these robes are not gentlemen born. Give me
the
lie, do; and try whether I am not now a
gentleman born.
AUTOLYCUS: I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.
CLOWN: Ay, and have been so any time these four
hours.
SHEPHERD: And so have I, boy.
CLOWN: So you have; but I was a gentleman born
before my
father; for the King's son took me by the
hand, and
called me brother; and then the two kings
called my
father brother; and then the Prince (my
brother) and
the Princess (my sister) called my father
father; and
so we wept; and there was the first
gentleman-like
tears that ever we shed.
SHEPHERD: We may live, son, to shed many more.
CLOWN: Ay; or else 'twere hard luck; being in so
preposterous estate as we are.
Autolycus did everything he could to the rustics together with Florizel, but the prince and his girlfriend were too seasick to uncover the truth. The con-man is philosophical about his lost opportunity, saying that becoming a good guy at this point would not have fit with his earlier career as a criminal. Now he has to kiss up to the two yokels that he was lording over when he played the courtier. The Shepherd and Clown come swaggering in, having just crossed the great divide into the elite class of gentlemen. The King, grateful for their having saved the Princess, has elevated them. They now want to make sure everyone knows their new status and, even though all this happened just four hours before, they insist they are gentlemen born. The Clown, perhaps remembering how badly Autolycus had treated them, now challenges the con-man to fight him as a gentleman, something that was not possible when he was just a commoner: a gentleman lost his dignity when he lowered himself to fight with a peasant. Now the Clown makes a point of saying he was a gentleman born before his father, because Florizel called him brother before the kings called the Shepherd brother. At that point everything changed, so that even their tears were gentlemanlike. When the Shepherd says they will live to shed many more, his son agrees because now they are preposterous, a mistake for prosperous. Apparently being a gentleman doesn’t ensure a functioning vocabulary when it comes to words of more than two syllables.
Autolycus may say he is happy to have missed preferment, but the truth is he would like to get his old job back with Florizel, so he asks the Clown to recommend him to the prince. In the last sequence of this scene at lines 157 -- 186, how does the Clown respond? What qualifications does he think the con-man possesses? What exactly does the Clown think being a gentleman born entails?
AUTOLYCUS: I humbly beseech you, sir, to
pardon me all the
faults I have committed to your worship and
to give
me your good report to the prince my
master.
SHEPHERD: Prithee, son, do: for we must be gentle, now we
are
gentlemen.
CLOWN: Thou wilt amend thy life?
AUTOLYCUS: Ay, an it like [if it pleases] your good
worship.
CLOWN: Give me thy hand. I will swear to the prince
thou
art as honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.
SHEPHERD: You may say it, but not swear it.
CLOWN: Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors
[peasants] and
franklins [wealthy farmers] say it,
I'll swear it.
SHEPARD: How if it be false, son?
CLOWN: If it be ne'er so false, a true gentleman may
swear
it in the behalf of his friend; and I'll
swear to
the prince thou art a tall fellow of thy
hands [courageous man]and
that thou wilt not be drunk; but I know
thou art no
tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt
be
drunk: but I'll swear it, and I would thou
wouldst
be a tall fellow of thy hands.
AUTOLYCUS: I will prove so, sir, to my power [the
best of my ability].
CLOWN: Ay, by any means prove a tall fellow. If I do
not
wonder how thou darest venture to be drunk,
not
being a tall fellow, trust me not. Hark, the
kings
and the princes, our kindred, are going to
see the
Queen's picture. Come, follow us; we'll be
thy
good masters.
The Clown loves the power he thinks comes with being a gentleman. It means that you can give someone your word of honor, swear something to be true, and it will be so accepted because you are a gentleman born, even if it just happened! His father warns him that while he can tell the prince, his brother, that Autolycus is as honest a true fellow as any in Bohemia, but he had better not swear it. Both the rustics have had enough experience with the con-man to have a glimmer of the truth about his character. But the Clown is undeterred – swearing is what gentlemen born do, and their friends accept their word as law. Such lower class people, like boors and franklins (which is what the Shepherd and Clown had been just a few hours before), can only say what they think is true. Gentlemen get to swear. Even if it is false, the swearing makes it acceptable to other gentlemen. Now the Clown knows that while he may swear Autolycus will not get drunk and will be courageous, the reality is that he probably won’t be, at least based on his past behavior. Nevertheless, the con-man promises to live up to what his new master has promised, to the best of his ability. The Clown is either being hopelessly naïve about human nature or he believes that his transformation into a gentleman may extend the opportunity for change to others. We don’t know how Autolycus will respond to his second chance, but at least he’s being offer one. The three go off to witness the unveiling of the painted statue of Hermione.
Act V, Scene 3
The final scene of The Winter’s Tale is one of the most magical in all the plays, when it is performed well. At a rational level, it leaves all kinds of loose ends, but at an emotional level it comes to a satisfying conclusion. In the scene we’ll see Shakespeare try to build suspense as much as possible, hide the conceptual questions temporarily and focus on the emotional satisfaction of redemption and reunion. [Act V, scene 3]
Everyone crowds into Paulina’s house and marvels at her collection of art treasures. (In Shakespeare’s day, throughout Europe the masterpieces of visual art, paintings and sculpture, were almost all locked away from public view and held in private collections, as we see here.) In this opening sequence, lines 18 – 48, Paulina reveals the statue of Hermione. How does she explain its appearance? What is Leontes’ reaction? Paulina’s reaction? How does Paulina keep the statue from being touched?
PAULINA: But here it is;
prepare
To see the life as lively mocked, as ever
Still sleep mocked death: behold, and say
'tis well.
[PAULINA draws a curtain, and discovers HERMIONE standing like a
statue]
I like your silence; it the more shows off
Your wonder; but yet speak, first you, my
liege.
Comes it not something near?
LEONTES: Her
natural posture!
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she
In thy not chiding; for she was as tender
As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina,
Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing
So aged as this seems.
POLIXENES: O, not by
much.
PAULINA: So much the more our carver's excellence;
Which lets go by some sixteen years, and
makes her
As she lived now.
LEONTES : As now she might have
done,
So much to my good comfort, as it is
Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty -- warm
life,
As now it coldly stands -- when first I
woo'd her.
I am ashamed: does not the stone rebuke me,
For being more stone than it? O royal piece!
There's magic in thy majesty, which has
My evils conjured to remembrance, and
From thy admiring daughter took the spirits,
Standing like stone with thee.
PERDITA: And
give me leave,
And do not say 'tis superstition that
I kneel and then implore her blessing.
Lady,
Dear queen, that ended when I but began,
Give me that hand of yours to kiss.
PAULINA: O,
patience!
The statue is but newly fixed, the color’s
Not dry.
The effect of this scene is that the audience, as much as the characters on stage, want the statue to be real. Paulina is proud of the work and says it is so realistic it is as if art mocked life, or sleep mocked death. Leontes’ first reaction is to act as if the stone were alive and would chide him for causing his wife’s death; then he remembers how mild she was, even when he was about to condemn her to wrongful death, and realizes she would not chide him Then he notices how wrinkled the statue appears to be. Paulina explains that this is the genius of the artist who has created her likeness as if she had not died 16 years before. Leontes feels the effect of the statue on his imagination, saying at line 39, “There's magic in thy majesty, which has/ My evils conjured to remembrance.” This is just one of many references, direct and indirect, to the magic power of this work of art. Perdita feels it as well and kneels before it to implore its blessing. (She apologizes if her action seems superstition, reminding us and Shakespeare’s audience that English in the past, before the religious break with the Catholic Church, had knelt like this before the statue of the Virgin Mary.) Perdita even tries to kiss the statue’s hand, only to be warned by Paulina that the paint is not yet dried. (Sculpture was routinely painted in ancient times and up to the Renaissance, a fact most modern art lovers would find strange.) This is the first of a number of places in the scene where Shakespeare builds the suspense by having Paulina forbid its being touched.
Camillo and Polixenes urge Leontes to leave, saying that the painful memories stirred by the statue are too much for him. In the next sequence, lines 56 – 85, Leontes becomes convinced the statue breathes, even as Paulina apologizes for stirring his passion. Notice how Leontes surrenders to the poignant illusion of life:
PAULINA: Indeed,
my lord,
If I had thought the sight of my poor image
Would thus have wrought you -- for the
stone is mine --
I'd not have showed it.
LEONTES: Do not
draw the curtain.
PAULINA: No longer shall you gaze on 't, lest your fancy
[imagination]
May think anon it moves.
LEONTES: Let
be, let be!
Would I were dead, but that methinks
already--
What was he that did make it? See, my lord,
Would you not deem it breathed? And that
those veins
Did verily bear blood?
POLIXENES: Masterly
done!
The very life seems warm upon her lip.
LEONTES: The fixture of her eye has motion in 't,
As we are mock'd with art.
PAULINA: I'll draw
the curtain;
My lord's almost so far transported that
He'll think anon it lives.
LEONTES: O sweet
Paulina,
Make me to think so twenty years together!
No settled senses of the world can match
The pleasure of that madness. Let 't alone.
PAULINA: I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirred you;
but
I could afflict you farther.
LEONTES: Do,
Paulina;
For this affliction has a taste as sweet
As any cordial comfort. Still, methinks,
There is an air comes from her. What fine
chisel
Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock
me,
For I will kiss her.
PAULINA: Good my
lord, forbear!
The ruddiness upon her lip is wet;
You'll mar it if you kiss it; stain your
own
With oily painting. Shall I draw the
curtain?
LEONTES: No, not these twenty years.
PERDITA: So long
could I
Stand by, a looker on.
Leontes becomes more convinced the statue is alive as Paulina fives times in this sequence tries to draw the curtain or apologizes for having shown it in the first place. Obviously her protests have just the opposite effect on the King. At line 62 he wishes he might be dead if he does not believe it moves. At line 64 he thinks it breathes, and at line 65 he is sure blood runs in its veins. Its eyes seem to stare at him at line 67. Paulina “worries” at line 70 that he is convinced it lives, to which he cries, O sweet Paulina/ Make me to think so twenty years together! He calls this illusion pleasure of that madness at line 73. Now Leontes is willingly surrendering to a fantasy that he wants to be true, in a curious way just as he had surrendered to an evil dream back in the beginning of the play. This dream seeks to affirm life where none exists, whereas his earlier fantasy sought to find sin where none existed. Paulina hints at even stronger illusions that she says could afflict you further. Surrendering to his overwhelming desire for the illusion to be truth, he seeks to kiss the statue. Paulina issues the warning again about the fresh paint and offers for the last time to draw the curtain. Leontes and his daughter beg to look at it for another twenty years.
In the next sequence, lines 85 – 121, the secret of the statue is revealed, but not before Paulina increases the suspense even more by introducing the possibility of magic. Notice how Shakespeare puts off any detailed explanation about the hows and whys of Hermione’s long exile.
PAULINA: Either
forbear,
Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you
For more amazement. If you can behold it,
I'll make the statue move indeed, descend,
And take you by the hand-- but then you'll
think,
Which I protest against, I am assisted
By wicked powers.
LEONTES: What you can make her
do,
I am content to look on; what to speak,
I am content to hear; for 'tis as easy
To make her speak, as move.
PAULINA: It is
required
You do awake your faith; then, all stand
still;
Or those that think it is unlawful business
I am about, let them depart.
LEONTES: Proceed:
No foot shall stir.
PAULINA: Music, awake her:
strike. [Music]
'Tis time; descend; be stone no more;
approach;
Strike all that look upon with marvel; come,
I'll fill your grave up. Stir; nay, come
away;
Bequeath to death your numbness, for from
him
Dear life redeems you. You perceive she
stirs:
[HERMIONE
comes down]
Start not; her actions shall be holy as
You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun
her
Until you see her die again, for then
You kill her double. Nay, present your
hand.
When she was young, you wooed her; now in
age,
Is she become the suitor?
LEONTES: O, she's
warm!
If this be magic, let it be an art
Lawful as eating.
POLIXENES: She embraces
him.
CAMILLO: She hangs about his neck;
If she pertain to life let her speak too.
POLIXENES: Ay, and make 't manifest where she has lived,
Or how stolen from the dead.
PAULINA: That she is living,
Were it but told you, should be hooted at
Like an old tale; but it appears she lives,
Though yet she speak not. Mark a little
while:
Please you to interpose, fair madam; kneel,
And pray your mother's blessing; turn, good
lady,
Our Perdita is found.
Up to this point, Paulina steadfastly insisted that the statue was just stone. Now she heightens the illusion, demanding that the spectators either leave or be prepared for more amazement. She will take the next logical step and make the stone move. But first, at line 90, she wants to make clear that she is not assisted by wicked powers. At that time magic was seen as a dangerous, subversive practice in which people performed unbelievable feats, often with the aid of satanic powers. (In Christopher Marlowe’s great drama Doctor Faustus, the hero performs many magical deeds, because he has sold his soul to the Devil, a fact which he keeps secret until just before his death.) Paulina does not offer any explanation for where she got her power, but she does, at line 95, demand that people believe that she can make the statue move. (In the old stage version of Peter Pan, the first live play I ever saw, there was a magic moment when the audience had to affirm that they believed in fairies by clapping in order to save Tinker Bell from Captain Hook. I withheld judgment at that time, being a skeptical six, and have carried the guilt ever since.) Paulina uses music to “awaken” the statue: Shakespeare often used music to symbolize harmony. She tells the statue it is time, as if this is what they have been waiting for. To continue the illusion that Hermione is returning from the dead, Paulina offers to fill your grave up, as if the queen has left it empty. The statue descends from her pedestal and holds out her hand to Leontes, whose reaction at line 109 is one of the most powerful and poignant in the play: Oh, she is warm!/ If this be magic, let it be an art/ As lawful as eating. The illusion, whatever its source, is so life-affirming he does not want it to end. Notice that Leontes does not speak directly to his wife in this sequence or she to him. Under the circumstances any conversation would be tinged with guilt or recrimination, and so Shakespeare is content to have Polixenes and Camillo observe the couple’s non-verbal communication. At line 113 Polixenes starts asking the kinds of questions any rational person would want to know the answers to – where has she been for 16 years? Why did she conceal that she was alive? Has she been watching daytime television all those years? Shakespeare does not want to distract from the mood, and so he has Paulina put off any answers. The key to the deception is at line 121 where Paulina has Perdita kneel again to her mother and seek blessing and to affirm that Hermione’s daughter has been found. The oracle required that “that which was lost must be found” for Leontes to be redeemed and, apparently, for Hermione to return from the dead.
The final sequence, lines 121 – 155, consists of statements from the three principals and one unexpected wedding. Why do we have an apparently extraneous marriage at the end of the play? What significant person does Hermione not speak to directly? Why? What is everyone going off to do at the very end?
HERMIONE: You gods look down
And from your sacred vials pour your graces
Upon my daughter's head! Tell me, mine own,
Where hast thou been preserved? Where
lived? How found
Thy father's court? For thou shalt hear
that I,
Knowing by Paulina that the oracle
Gave hope thou wast in being [alive],
have preserved
Myself to see the issue.
PAULINA: There's
time enough for that,
Lest they desire upon this push
[excitement] to trouble
Your joys with like relation [accounts].
Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake [share] to every one. I an
old turtle [lovebird],
Will wing me to some withered bough, and
there
My mate, that's never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost.
LEONTES: O, peace,
Paulina!
Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,
As I by thine a wife. This is a match,
And made between 's by vows. Thou hast
found mine,
But how, is to be question'd; for I saw
her,
As I thought, dead; and have in vain said
many
A prayer upon her grave. I'll not seek far,
For him, I partly know his mind, to find
thee
An honorable husband. Come, Camillo,
And take her by the hand, whose worth and
honesty
Is richly noted and here justified
By us, a pair of kings. Let's from this
place.
What! Look upon my brother [to Hermione].
Both your pardons,
That e'er I put between your holy looks
My ill suspicion. This is your son-in-law,
And son unto the King, whom, heavens
directing,
Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good
Paulina,
Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely
Each one demand an answer to his part
Perform'd in this wide gap of time since
first
We were dissever'd [separated]. Hastily
lead away.
All of Hermione’s questions and concern are focused on Perdita. She does not speak to her husband at any point, forestalling any embarrassing questions or accusations. (We still have the death of Mamillius to deal with.) Shakespeare wants nothing to disrupt the mood of joy and magic at this moment of reconciliation and redemption. That’s why Perdita’s marriage to Florizel is reconfirmed and Paulina is married off to Camillo. Remember that the joy of discovery of Perdita’s secret also meant that Paulina confirmed that her husband had died. If music was a way of symbolizing harmony on stage, so was marriage at the end of a comedy. Leave no one alone, if it can be helped! Besides, Paulina will need another man to straighten out now that Leontes is finally released from her stern probation. And so ends the magic of The Winter’s Tale.