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The Transformative Power of Storytelling
The thematic significance of storytelling is suggested in the play’s title. In early modern England, the phrase winter’s tale was used to refer to any story that offered light entertainment, typically to women, children, and the elderly. Shakespeare evokes the title phrase in act 2, where Mamillius, the young Sicilian prince, offers to tell a story to his mother. Whereas his mother invites a “merry” story, Mamillius insists: “A sad tale’s best for winter” (2.1.33). The boy’s insistence proves ominous, since he will be the first to die in the play’s third act. In this way, Shakespeare stages an act of storytelling that foreshadows the play’s imminent transformation into a tragedy. Meanwhile, this transformation is already at work in Leontes’s mounting madness. The Sicilian king spends the first two acts spinning a dangerous, self-sabotaging series of fictions. First, he concocts a story about how his wife and best friend have been engaged in a longstanding affair, and that both of his children were fathered by another man. Second, he tells himself a tale about Camillo plotting with Polixenes to overthrow or even assassinate him. These stories result indirectly in the deaths of Mamillius, Hermione, and Antigonus, and they set up a likely demise for the infant Perdita.
Yet gradually, storytelling’s transformative power gets recuperated. In act 4, which takes place sixteen years on, the scene shifts definitively from the bleak winter landscapes of the first three acts to a spring bloom. The springtime’s spirit of renewal infuses the pastoral world of the Bohemian countryside with a sense of liveliness that leads to mischief and love. The play’s main mischief maker, Autolycus, is a master spinner of bawdy tales, which he uses to rob the countryfolk. His mischief ultimately backfires, and in the meantime his songs and stories provide ample entertainment. Yet his storytelling marks the play’s shift back toward comedy. Also supporting this shift is the love discourse between Florizell and the grown Perdita, each of whom recount stories from classical mythology to express their devotion. Tellingly, these stories are myths of transformation. Storytelling also plays a major role in the final act, when Shakespeare avoids depicting the climactic revelation of Perdita’s identity onstage. Instead, he has a trio of anonymous courtiers recount the event. As such, the entirety of act 5, scene 2, is an emotionally charged and joyful act of storytelling. This scene firmly cements the play’s transformation into a comedy and sets up the final scene of Hermione’s miraculous resurrection.
The Danger of Miscommunication
In the world of the play, loyalty is a key component of a person’s honor. Betrayal therefore comes at a high cost. Significantly, however, no real betrayal takes place in The Winter’s Tale. Instead, there are varying degrees of miscommunication that, from the audience’s perspective at least, should be quite harmless. Yet from the characters’ more limited points of view, miscommunication frequently leads to the perception of betrayal. Take the example of Leontes and Polixenes. Though inseparable as boys, their adult duties as kings has led to a situation where the bulk of their communication now takes place through intermediaries: “they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands as over a vast; and embraced as it were from the ends of opposed winds” (1.1.30–33). The metaphorical distance separating the kings isn’t explicitly the reason for their falling out in the first act. However, it arguably contributes to Leontes’s disastrous misreading of the friendship between Polixenes and Hermione. In the two acts that follow, Leontes grows so tyrannical in his madness that Hermione struggles to defend herself against his version of reality: “Sir,” she says to him in shock and grief, “You speak a language that I understand not” (3.2.85).
We witness an echo of this miscommunication play out in the sheep-shearing scene in act 4, when concealed identities lead to a near-tragic miscommunication between Prince Florizell and his father. Polixenes feels hurt that his own son wouldn’t invite him to his wedding. However, because he’s in disguise, he can’t immediately reveal the personal nature of his emotional response. Meanwhile, Florizell, not aware he’s speaking to his own father, speaks with a casual callousness that backfires violently. Polixenes explodes into an indignant rage and starts threatening not just his son, but also his betrothed, Perdita, and her adoptive father, the Shepherd. The many disguises that feature in the play contribute to varying degrees of miscommunication that harbor the threat of danger. In the example of Florizell and Polixenes, the results of their self-concealment are nearly catastrophic. In Perdita’s case, her concealed identity, which ostensibly has kept her alive up to this point, now subjects her to the Bohemian king’s wrath. As for the conman, Autolycus, his various disguises pose a mild threat to the countryfolk he steals from. Ultimately, however, Autolycus plays a comic role, and through a misunderstanding of his own he ends up accidentally saving the day.
The Curse and Blessing of Time
Time hangs over The Winter’s Tale as both a blessing and a curse, both giving life and taking it away. Though youth has the promise of ample time, time’s passage also ages the young and provides incessant reminders of mortality. In the play’s first, more tragic half, time is clearly a curse. Time is what has introduced metaphorical distance between Leontes and Polixenes, who have grown apart in the act of growing up and taking on royal duties in distant kingdoms. Furthermore, as they continue to age, time puts pressure on both kings to secure the future of their royal lines. Though each man has a son, and Leontes has a second child on the way, they each find themselves in danger of losing their heir. With the abandonment of his newborn daughter and Mamillius’s subsequent, Leontes’s line seems to have ended. And without a wife to produce more children, his future is in ruins. For his part, Polixenes nearly disowns his son for courting a country girl, which would similarly endanger the future of his line.
On the other hand, time also turns out to be a blessing in The Winter’s Tale, where its passage has a capacity to heal old wounds and establish new relations. Shakespeare signals this capacity at the top of the fourth act, where a personified abstraction of Time takes the stage and advances the plot by sixteen years. This announcement has a cheeky edge to it, since Shakespeare is underscoring his own brazen disregard for the so-called “unity of time,” which neoclassical critics believed necessary for tragedies. The leap in time therefore signals the play’s shift into a more comic mode. The promise of comedy indicated here comes to fruition in the play’s final act. By this point, Leontes has meditated on his monstrous actions and cultivated genuine contrition. Sixteen years of penitence enables him to receive both Polixenes and Camillo with open arms and begin the work of mending broken bonds of friendship and loyalty. Leontes’s penitence also paves the way for Perdita’s safe return to Sicilia, which in turn creates the conditions for Hermione’s resurrection. Significantly, these restorative events at last fulfill the oracle’s prediction from the third act: “the King shall live without and heir if that which is lost be not found” (3.2.144–46).
