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“But it Appears She Lives”: Iteration in The Winters Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

James Edward Siemon
James Edward Siemon*
Affiliation:
Wenatchee, Washington
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Abstract

That The Winter's Tale has a double plot has long been noted, but no one has yet fully explored the nature and extent of iteration in the two parts of the play. Structural parallels between Acts i-iii and Acts iv-v are reinforced by repeated statements of motifs common to both parts of the play and by the variation in the second half of motifs important to the first. The dramatic evidence of Hermione's death is substantial, particularly in m.ii and nr.iii, and later details (those in v.ii and v.iii) come too late to qualify the dramatic as well as thematic import of Hermione's loss. These later details must, therefore, stand as alternatives rather than as explanations. The second half of the play thus forms an alternative to the first, with Hermione's fate of central importance in pointing up their contrasting natures. Each part of the play makes a statement of the possibilities for gain and for loss within society, and the statement of neither is complete without the other. Together, they suggest limits as well as possibilities.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , January 1974 , pp. 10 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 15 Clifford Leech has some excellent things to say about the cyclical nature of the play and the tentative quality of its happy ending. See “The Structure of the Last Plays,” Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 19–30.

Note 2 in page 15 C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959). See esp. Ch. i. Barber himself, however, apparently does not consider that his formula applies to The Winter's Tale. See “ ‘Thou That Beget'st Him That Did Thee Beget’: Transformation in ‘Pericles’ and ‘The Winter's Tale,‘ ” Shakespeare Survey, 22 (1969), 59–67.

Note 3 in page 15 Northrop Frye, “The Argument of Comedy,” English Institute Essays, 1948 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), pp. 58–73. The essay has been widely reprinted. Frye, of course, is not alone in commenting on the importance in Shakespearean comedy of a removal from a social to a more primitive world.

Note 4 in page 16 From time to time, one is told that Paulina eschews magic, but there is no textual basis for this assertion. She denies that she is assisted by “wicked powers” and insists that “my spell is lawful.” The distinction between lawful and wicked magic is clear in The Tempest. Paulina seems to distinguish between two kinds of magic, not between the real thing and a parlor-game imitation of it; were it not so, her use of spell would be remarkable.

Note 5 in page 16 Coghill, “Six Points of Stage-Craft in The Winter's Tale,” Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 33. Matchett, “Dramatic Techniques in ‘The Winter's Tale,‘ ” Shakespeare Survey, 22 (1969), 95–98.

Note 6 in page 16 All references are to the New Arden The Winter's Tale, ed. J. H. P. Pafford (London: Methuen, 1963).

Note 7 in page 16 “Dramatic Techniques in ‘The Winter's Tale,‘ ” pp. 95–98.

Note 8 in page 16 In “The Structural Pattern of The Winter's Tale,” A Review of English Literature, 5 (April 1964), 72–82, Ernest Schanzer makes some important observations on structural parallels, including Camillo's role, between Acts i-iii and iv-v. See esp. pp. 74–79. See, too, Schanzer's edition of the play in the New Penguin series (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1969) and Northrop Frye, “Recognition in The Winter's Tale,” Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Richard Hosley (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1962), pp. 235–46.

Note 9 in page 16 Paulina has a share in effecting the resolution. Her meddling results in the preservation of Perdita and aids in the purgation of Leontes. The marriage of the two servantmeddlers reflects the degree to which they are counterparts to one another. Then, too, there is Autolycus.

Note 10 in page 16 The play has, in fact, been criticized for making it too abundantly clear that Hermione is dead and thus laying no groundwork for her reappearance. See the New Cambridge edition of The Winter's Tale. In his note to iii.ii.132–36, J. H. P. Pafford, the New Arden editor, defends the oracle's inattention to Hermione against Coleridge, QuillerCouch, “and others”: “But Shakespeare does not wish to hint that Hermione may be living. On the contrary he repeatedly emphasizes that she is dead (e.g. iii.ii.201 ; iii.iii.42; v.i.80; v.iii.140).” It seems remarkable that such emphasis on the fact of Hermione's death should be dismissed as merely intended to deceive the audience for the sake of a coup de theatre.

Note 11 in page 16 Twelfth Night and Shakespearian Comedy (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1965). See esp. pp. 81–83.

Note 12 in page 16 The repetition of the denial of the child by the father is fully developed in Polixenes' diatribe against Florizel and Perdita, iv.iv.418–32.