The Gospel According to Shakespeare by Boitani Piero; Jacoff Rachel; Montemaggi Vittorio

Author:Boitani, Piero; Jacoff, Rachel; Montemaggi, Vittorio [Boitani, Piero]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006630 Religion / Biblical Studies / History & Culture
ISBN: 3441125
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2014-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Resurrection

It is required

You do awake your faith.

The Winter’s Tale is governed by an unstoppable imagination, which seems to mock any kind of coherence, be it spatial, chronological, mythical, or even fantastic. Bohemia is on the coast, and on its shores there lurks a murderous bear, which the audience sees on stage. The time in which the play is set is that of classical antiquity, and a prominent role is thus played by an oracle of Apollo arriving from Delphos (neither Delphi nor Delos). Yet Polixenes, King of Bohemia, does not want his name to be associated with that of Judas, who betrayed Jesus, “the Best.” His son, Florizel, seems to know well the metamorphoses of the gods; yet his beloved Perdita compares his acting to that of “Whitsun pastorals,” the medieval “mysteries” still in vogue in Shakespeare’s day. Leontes, king of Sicily, mentions Dame Pertelote, the hen protagonist of the medieval animal epic and of one of Chaucer’s tales; yet his wife, Hermione, says that she is daughter of the emperor of Russia. Moreover, a thief in The Winter’s Tale named Autolycus claims that he is “littered under Mercury,” like Autolycus, son of Hermes and grandfather of Odysseus. Yet in the same scene, a shepherd clown states that the singers are ready for the feast, “most of them means and basses, but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.” Finally, at the end of the play, in a “gallery” that one pictures in the style of the Renaissance, there appears a statue: it is said that this was made by Giulio Romano, who was a distinguished disciple of Raphael and the painter of wondrous frescoes in Mantua, yet never a sculptor (5.2.94–98).1

The Winter’s Tale is also, explicitly and in its design, one of those “old tales” that Lear and Cordelia would have told each other in prison had they lived long enough to do so. This is defined internally by the play itself, issuing from its plot as the movement of a symphony issues from the first statement of its theme. Indeed, early in the play, Hermione asks her son Mamillius to “tell ’s a tale,” and he decides that “a sad tale’s best for winter” (2.1.22–25). Later, the gentlemen who recount the story of Perdita twice call it an “old tale” and specify that it “will have matter to rehearse though credit be asleep and not an ear open” (5.2.28, 61–62). Finally, in the last scene of the play, Paulina declares to Polixenes that if anyone were to say that Hermione lives, he would be “hooted at” for telling “an old tale” (5.3.117). The Winter’s Tale is precisely that. And it all begins with Leontes’ furious jealousy.

Leontes, king of Sicily, is hosting Polixenes, king of Bohemia. The two are dear childhood friends, and Leontes wishes Polixenes could stay with him a while longer, even though matters of state require his friend to return to his own kingdom. To convince him to stay, Leontes has Hermione speak to him.

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