The Winter's Tale
For a plot synopsis, see the Folger edition's opening page. For a real understanding of the play, you'll need to read Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale using the assigned edition for your course, a specific edition required by your professor (strongly recommended). If your professor has not required a specific or hard-copy edition, you may choose your own from your favorite library or read the digital edition (linked previously) produced by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Avoid relying on internet summaries or modern-language re-tellings.
The Winter's Tale is often categorized as a Romance, with other late Shakespeare plays. This anachronistic category ("romance" was not used for these plays until the 19th century) uses structures and tropes adopted from other established genres, but tends to focus on travel, the contrast between youth and age, and supernatural intervention in the resolution of crisis. The Winter's Tale, split as it is into two distinct halves divided by a speech by a personified Time, stretches its action across sixteen years and two countries. The first half of the play takes place primarily in the court of Sicilia before briefly visiting the coast of Bohemia; the second half dallies in the countryside of Bohemia before returning to the Sicilian court. This geographic division establishes the model for a number of pairings throughout the play, around which one can begin to chart the relationships and divisions of the characters and their concerns.
Among the themes and concerns of the play are:
The Problem of Women
Women's speech is at the heart of the plot of this play. Hermione's successful persuasion of Polixenes to extend his stay in Sicilia is what leads to Leontes's jealous, despite the fact that she does not speak until prompted by him. Paulina's defense of Hermione later informs her role as Leontes's conscience. Women are, in the eyes of men in this play, both appealing and suspicious. To talk is to invite further familiarity; to be silent is to admit guilt. The double-bind imposed on women leads to the disappearance of both Hermione and Perdita. Their reappearance comes about as the result of Leontes finally seeing the truth of his actions.
Evidence and Belief
The charges of infidelity laid against Hermione are based on Leontes's observations. But how accurate are his accusations? In his speech listing Hermione's crimes (1.2), Leontes escalates from what he has seen to what he imagines to be his wife's secret motives. The process by which Leontes convinces himself shows the power of beginning from an assumption and accumulating evidence in support of it.
Inheritance and Heritability
Leontes banishes his infant daughter both because he does not believe the child is his, and because he believes she will inherit her mother's faithlessness. Hermione's own defense hinges on her familial relationships: wife of a king, daughter of a king, mother of a prince. Mamillius's death comes as a symbolic punishment for the sins of his father's lack of faith in Hermione. Perdita's disdain for the gillyvors as "nature's bastards" echoes her father's abandonment of the child he believes to be a bastard. When Perdita and Florizel are received by Leontes, the king is shocked by how much they resemble the young Hermione and Polixenes.
Representation and Copies
Is the end of the play a miracle of a statue come alive or a reveal of a long-hidden Hermione? Copies and representations are always under suspicion in this play, including children as copies of their parents. Autolycus becomes a gentleman again by putting on the proper clothes--but is he a copy or the real thing? The stories told are also copies--of experience, of history, of hopes. Mamillius's story is never fully told, but we hear the story of the youthful gambols of Polixenes and Leontes, of Leontes's courtship of Hermione, of Autolycus's earlier life. Most strangely, we do not, as an audience, see the reunion of Perdita and her father; instead we are told that story by three otherwise anonymous gentlemen. What is the power of story in this story, and what is its liability?
Authority and Resistance
Supernatural Intervention