The Winter's Tale

Definitely one of Shakespeare's lesser plays, The Winter's Tale wrestles unsuccessfully with structural problems that the Bard would only resolve in his later play The Tempest. He also delves into dynamics that he had already represented much more successfully elsewhere (the jealousy of Othello, the madness of King Lear, the disguises of Much Ado About Nothing and the fantastical cornucopia from A Midsummer Night's Dream).

On the face of it, this might suggest a muddle, but The Winter's Tale is more straightforward than many commentaries let on. A king fears he is being cuckolded by his wife and, jealously plotting revenge, he drives her into the grave and their daughter (who he believes illegitimate) into an abandoned exile. Seeing the show more error of his ways, a blizzard of fantastical coincidences leads his daughter, raised by a shepherd, to marry a foreign prince and return home for a happy reconcilement.

This switch from tragedy to comedy is far from elegant, and Shakespeare essentially Leeroy Jenkins-es his way through The Winter's Tale, one moment talking about cuckoldry and dashing babies' brains out and the next penning odes to flowers and chaste maidens. The resolution at the end is almost brazenly curt. It's like a dream, where there is a coherent narrative but your drowsy brain is pulling in elements from wherever it can find them, so that the play embraces violence, sexual jealousy and pastoral festivity, the coastline of the famously-landlocked Bohemia, and noblemen with Roman names consulting ancient Delphic oracles before commissioning a statue from Giulio Romano, a 16th-century sculptor.

And, crucially, like those dreams, it all makes sense in the moment, even if once you wake up you struggle to piece it together. I remember once reading a book called The Reavers by George MacDonald Fraser, a piece of nonsense by a writer who, in all his other books, had provided novels that were humorous, meticulously researched and characterised by strong storytelling. My conclusion was that The Reavers – composed in 'some sort of fit', as the blurb put it – was a revealing insight into what Fraser found funny and interesting when all the structure and responsibility was taken away. Similarly, in The Winter's Tale, seeing Shakespeare in this loose, peculiar mood is very revealing. In a strange way it makes you feel closer to him than you would get from one of his more daunting, more expertly constructed plays. show less

Image of Dench and Branagh, 2016: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2015-11/Nov09/winters-tale-branag....

Reviews of audio books count, so I guess watching a play should, too. Perhaps more so, as that was the author's intended medium.

I saw a stage production of The Winter's Tale a few days after finishing Jeanette Winterson's modern novelisation, The Gap of Time, which I reviewed HERE.

My mother tells me I saw the play in my late teens, but I have no memory of it. My knowledge of the plot was from Winterson's summary and then her adaptation.

I enjoyed the play, but it was odder than I expected (I see now that it's usually categorised as one of the "problem plays" because it is both tragedy and comedy). Many of the key events show more happen off-stage (e.g. deaths), though it does have the famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by bear”.

Somehow, it worked, though.

1. Royal Tragedy

Act one establishes a happy family and a happy court, before things rapidly disintegrate through the tragic and alarming madness of the King Leontes, obsessed by the lie that his pregnant wife’s baby is that of his childhood friend.

The steadfastness of his wife is admirable and moving, though it perhaps stretches credulity. Or maybe I’m just not as hopeful, loving, or forgiving as Hermione. Nevertheless, those are entirely positive attributes.

More problematic, are the unpalatable, immoral, and illegal actions demanded of some, under the guise of loyalty to their king. Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison experiment and Milgram’s obedience experiments came to mind.

Death comes to the court, and profound loss in addition to that.

2. Bucolic Comedy

The second act fast forwards sixteen years to a lively sheep-shearing festival, young love vetoed, and some comic routines from a pickpocket/peddler, amongst others.

The more subtle theme (emphasised far more strongly in Winterson’s version) is about the goodness that can be found in ordinary people – selfless love, whether of an adult for a foundling, or between young people, not thinking of wealth or social position (or their lack of).

3. Revelations, Resolution, Redemption?

It ends with revelations, resolution, and a transformation that might be magic, an hallucination, or a straightforward trick.

Forgiveness.

A happy ending that is another reason why this is no tragedy. But it is strange. show less

We weep, we dance, we shiver, we bake, we live, we die. This is the Ecclesiastes of the dramatic canon and I want it played at my funeral.

I think this is as bipolar a play as I've ever read and I feel that I must give it two reviews to do it justice.

I found Leontes in his green-eyed frenzy more disturbing than Othello. The Moor was an honest soldier subtly deceived. Leontes was an absolute monarch who went mad, roaring his diseased fancies in public, crushing dissent in those who knew better (with one exception), curable in the end only by the gods. (A regular Henry VIII, now that I think about it. ) The only person who stands up to him while he is in frenzy is the noblewoman Paulina, a great and unheralded creation, a role for Kathy Bates or Renee Zellweger.

I liked the second half well enough with its bumpkins and moonstruck lovers. I loved Autolycus the vagabond, show more pickpocket, sharper, the last in Shakespeare's long line of sharp rogues and clever clowns.

I've never read a more preposterous happy ending. I didn't mind too much. I wanted this play to end happily. show less

This had potential, but failed. It started as yet another Shakespeare play in which a king flies ridiculously off the handle. The idea of the infant princess left for dead and found by shepherds and raised was promising. The closest thing the story had to an antagonist (besides the King Leontes, I guess) was a character named Autolycus who never actually did anything that shifted or even slowed the plot. But the worst thing about this play was that the climax of the story - the big reveal to which the entire play had been leading up - was related second hand! We only hear about it from some guy who is telling others an abbreviated account of it. WTF?! Then finally, it's revealed that Leontes wife Hermione hadn't been dead for the last show more 16 years as the king (not to mention the readers) were made to believe. This was completely unnecessary - nor was it necessary for us to believe she had died in the first place. This play could have been polished into something special. show less

Shakespeare: Hmm. "Content. 'Tis strange"... In fact, don't care much at all for it (hence all the histories I just retold, the plays I plagiarized from others). Honestly, I'm just bored by form– all tragedies and comedies have the same predictable stories.
Oh, I've got it: I'll write a play that begins as a tragedy–let's set it in winter because "a sad tale's best for winter" (2.1.25)– but halfway through, I'll come out on stage dressed up as Time, holding an hourglass, and re-do the whole play. I'll ask the audience to bear with me (mmm, yes, that's a good word, "bear"... I'll play a lot with that one, maybe even have a guy get chased offstage by a bear).
Antingonus: Arghhghhhh
Shakespeare (unbothered): You know, suspend show more disbelief like you're supposed to do in theater (I mean, who even cares that Bohemia's not really on the coast– anything is fair game in theater, right?). Right, so I'll come out and ask everyone to bear with me (smirk) while I speed up time: "to th' freshest things now reigning" (ha, that's good, "raining," get it? We're moving into spring rains, fertility, rebirth, etc) "and make stale/ The glistering of this present, as my tale/ Now seems to it."
Okay, so as we move into summer, my winter's tale will become "stale"/old news in the warmer weather.

Oh yeah, and let's make the "winter tragedy" be about a king who wrongly accuses his wife of being a whore, since "stale" is also slang for whore, and I like a good pun, you know? "The Winter's Stale?" Get it? Ha ha.
He'll kill her and his son (who he thinks is someone else's love child), banish his newborn daughter, but everything will be fine in the end-- a statue of the kings wife will be SO realistic that it comes to life. Ugh, and theater's so perfect for this too. Only actors can make representations of living people physically breathe. My art's way better than those stupid gilded monuments, since my characters are always coming to life again on stage. So in this play, everyone's a winner!

Antigonus and Mamillius: Hey!
Hermione: Hello? I was killed by my husband and then I have to marry him?
Paulina: My husband gets eaten by a bear and then I have to marry some random guy at the end? Psh, happy ending? What century do you live in?

Shakespeare: Ok, well, maybe the little boy stays dead. And Antigonus does get eaten by a bear, but that bear scene is just so good, it's got to stay. (I mean, how quotable are these stage directions: "Exit pursued by a bear"? So quotable.) [To the women] Hey, who's writing this play anyway?

Barthes: Well actually... show less

When I read this in High School last, I believed that I loved it more than all the other Shakespeare plays combined, and it still holds a ton of charm for me now, although not quite as much as before.

For one, the thief was slightly more annoying than as a charming plot device.

For another, it's hard to believe that even divorce could be so reconciled. :)

Granted, this is an almost magical divorce, so why not ramp up the reconciliation to wipe away the tragedy of a child's death, the loss of the newborn as well, the wrongful accusation and downfall of a true wife, and his betrayal of his loyal servant JUST BECAUSE he's been regretting all his actions for 20 years?

It's a very strong story if we're meant to feel pity for the old man. He show more regains everything except his eldest child because he was sincere in his remorse. It's damn beautiful, even, but in the end it's pure fantasy.

This was written at the end of Shakespeare's career and it was possibly meant to be his own expression of remorse. It fits the narrative, anyway, in the same way that Mozart wrote his own Requiem.

However, from an alternative reading of the text, I can't help but hate the blasé disregard for Hermione, the way she quietly retired away out of anyone's company for 20 years after the events (or she really did die and come back as a reanimated statue, which is slightly more palatable because at least she wouldn't have been so bored or lonely,) or the way that the rest of the world could even ALLOW THESE EVENTS TO HAPPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

*groan*

Look. I'm just upset at the state of the world here. I suppose Shakespeare is upset about it as well. After all, he focuses the second act entirely upon letting young people choose who they want to love and paint all other choices as tyrannical, and Perdita herself certainly knows her own mind, so it's not all black-and-white in the play. Her mother also knew her own mind when she used her wits to do as her husband bade, too, but we all know how that turned out.

Double-standards and insane jealousy seems to be the name of the game for us all, no? *sigh*

Still, it's undeniably a brilliant play. :) show less