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A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one
Of sprites and goblins. (2.1.33–34)
These lines belong to the young boy Mamillius who, at his mother’s behest, sits down to tell a story. But though Hermione suggests that he tell a “merry” tale, Mamillius insists that the winter season calls for “a sad tale.” It is this declaration that gives the play its title. Notably, winter’s tale was a common phrase used to describe a story told for the sake of entertaining women, children, and the elderly. Yet Mamillius also inflects this phrase with a sense of foreboding—one that we only fully recognize when he dies in the third act. In this sense, this “winter’s tale” foreshadows this play’s imminent transformation into a tragedy.
Apprehend
Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them. Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellowed; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now. Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires
Run not before mine honor, nor my lusts
Burn hotter than my faith. (4.4.28–39)
Florizell speaks these words to Perdita, who has just expressed her concern that his father, King Polixenes, will find out that he’s courting a lowly maiden like her. The prince responds to her worries by turning to classical mythology and citing stories in which gods transformed themselves into animals while in pursuit of mortal lovers. He uses their example as a point of comparison, claiming that no god ever transformed himself to greater purpose that Florizell himself. In recalling these stories of transformation, the Bohemian prince proclaims a love that will, in turn, transform Perdita’s life.
I make a broken delivery of the business, but the changes I perceived in the King and Camillo were very notes of admiration. They seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes. 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, but the wisest beholder that knew no more but seeing could not say if th’ importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of the one it must needs be. (5.2.10–21)
In the second scene of act 5, Shakespeare makes the surprising decision not to stage the reunion of Leontes and Polixenes, nor to show the revelation of Perdita’s true identity. Instead, he employs an unnamed courtier to recount these events secondhand to Autolycus, who has just arrived in Sicilia. The effect is quite powerful in the way the courtier’s description of the scene condenses its emotional power, which seems to have been charged with both joy and sorrow. The story confirms that the play will end having been transformed into a comedy. It also functions to help transform Autolycus from a cynical cutpurse to a loyal servant.
