The Winter’s Tale
What is this play?

Comedy?
Classified with the comedies in the First Folio of
1623
Ends with couples
reunion of Leontes and Hermione
pending marriage of Paulina and Camillo
pending marriage of Perdita and Florizel

Tragedy?
King makes a terrible error and his line is
seemingly dead
―Infection‖ of the king by jealousy
Loyalties tested
Honor valued over obedience

Romance?
―stories of exotic adventure and
travel, shipwrecks, spiritual and/or moral
quests, romantic love, reunions of lovers
and families long separated, virtue tested
and proved triumphant, and nobility
hidden and then discovered – all
unfolding in a world familiar with
supernatural forces, wide-ranging
marvels, magic, and enchantment‖
(Snyder)

Tragicomedy?
John Fletcher:
―A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of
mirth and killing, but in respect it wants
deaths, which is enough to make it no
tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is
enough to make it no comedy: which must be
a representation of familiar people, with such
kind of trouble as no life be questioned, so
that a God is as lawful in this as in a
tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy.‖

Genre according to the
Shepherd
―thou met‘st with things dying, I with things new-
born‖ (3.3.109-110)
―This is fairy gold, boy, and ‗twill prove so‖
(3.3.117-118)

Tragicomic Romance
Genre suggested by Barbara Mowat
Elements of tragicomedy and romance that are
compatible and complementary

Pastoral
Court or city versus country
Country is often idealized
Good example: Christopher Marlowe‘s
―Passionate Shepherd to His Love‖ (1599)
Sheep shearing festival at 4.4

―Generic Copiousness‖
Copia: varying an idea to achieve expansive
richness as a stylistic goal
Multiplying genres

Cheap Print
Autolycus‘s Ballads

Vagrancy & Broadside
Ballads
http://bit.ly/So9gdb

The Cooper of Norfolk
http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20256/transcription

Paulina‘s ―Witchcraft‖
Challenges to Authority in
The Winter’s Tale

Leontes. Out!
A Mankind witch! Hence with her, out o‘ door!
A most intelligencing bawd! (2.3.66-68)

An Homily Against Disobedience
and Willful Rebellion (London
1570)
―kings and princes [. . .] do reign
by God‘s ordinance‖
―Whosoever therefore resisteth
the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God‖

James I on Absolute
Monarchy
―For kings are not only God‘s
lieutenants upon earth, and sit
upon God‘s throne, but even by
God himself they are called
gods.‖

James I on Absolute
Monarchy
―God has the power to create, or
destroy, make, or unmake at his
pleasure, to give life, or send death, to
judge all, and to be judged nor
accountable to none; to raise low
things, and to make high things low at his
pleasure, and to God are both soul and
body due. And the like power have
kings.‖

James I on
Just King vs. Tyrant
Just king obeys the law
―So as every just king in a settled kingdom is
bound to observe that paction [contract] made to
his people by his laws‖
Tyrant makes up the rules as he goes along
―And therefore a king governing in a settled
kingdom leaves to be a king, and degenerates
into a tyrant as soon as he leaves off to rule
according to his laws.‖

James I on Absolute
Monarchy
BUT subjects may not rebel
―so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king
may do in the height of his power. But just kings
will ever be willing to declare what they will do, if
they will not incur the curse of God.‖
From A Speech to the Lords and Commons
of the Parliament at Whitehall, March
21, 1610

Chain of Authority
GOD
↓
KING
↓
HUSBAND/FATHER

Leontes as Absolute Monarch
Why, what need we
Commune with you of this, but rather follow
Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness
Imparts this; which if you or stupefied,
Or seeming so in skill, cannot or will not
Relish a truth like us, inform yourselves
We need no more of your advice. The matter,
The loss, the gain, the ord‘ring on‘t, is all
Properly ours. (2.1.161-170)

Juan Luis Vives on the
Behavior of Women
―Thou hast broken, thou false woman, the
most holy band of temporal law, that is to
say, thy faith and thy truth, which once
given, one enemy in the field will keep to
another though he should stand in danger
of death, and thou like a false wretch doth
not keep it to thine husband, which ought
to be more dear unto thee by right than
thyself.

Juan Luis Vives on the
Behavior of Women
Thou defilest the most pure church, which
holp to couple thee; thou breakest worldly
company; thou breakest the laws; thou
offendest thy country; thou beatest thy father
with a bitter scourge; thou beatest thy
sorrowful mother, thy sisters, thy brethren,
thy kinfolk, alliances, and all thy friends; thou
givest unto the company once an example of
mischief and castest an everlasting blot‖
(The Instruction of a Christian Woman 112-113)

Paulina‘s ―Disobedience‖
Leontes. How?
Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus,
I charged thee that she should not come
about me;
I knew she would. (2.3.41-44)

Paulina‘s ―Disobedience‖
Antigonus. I told her so, my lord,
On your displeasure‘s peril and on mine
She should not visit you.
Leontes. What, canst not rule her? (2.3.44-
46)

Paulina‘s ―Disobedience‖
Paulina. From all dishonesty he can; in this,
Unless he take the course that you have
done—
Commit me for committing honour—trust it,
He shall not rule me. (2.3.47-50)

Paulina‘s ―Disobedience‖
Leontes. A gross hag!
And losel, thou art worthy to be hanged,
That wilt not stay her tongue.
Antigonus. Hang all the husbands
That cannot do that feat, you‘ll leave
yourself
Hardly one subject. (2.3.107-111)

Reading Paulina‘s
Witchcraft
Witchcraft excuses Paulina‘s transgression
Witchcraft pushes her to the margins of the play

Agnes Heard
Depositions focus on a series of domestic and
familial incidents.
Milk dish Spinning trouble
―she could no longer spin nor make thread to
hold‖ (94)
Borrowed money Spoiled
milk
―the next day, she would have skimmed her milk
bowl, but it would not abide the skimming‖ (95)

Counter-magical Remedies
―women who feared bewitchment were
also paradoxically enabled … to take
action against the witch, action which
might involve behaviours at variance with
the range of feminine ideals available to
women in the early modern period‖ (127).

Counter-magical Witchcraft
It was believed that ―illness or maleficium can be
drawn out of one body by another‖ (123).
Purkiss tells the story of a midwife who healed
sick people using the bodies of infants, claiming
that ―the breath of the children would suck the
spirits out of‖ (123) the sick person.
Paulina. The good queen, / … hath brought you
forth a daughter - / Here ‗tis (2.3.64-66)

Infection
Camillo. ―Who does infect her?‖ (1.2.306)
Leontes. ―How I am gall‘d‖ (1.2.316); ―I have
tremor cordis on me‖ (1.2.109); ―And that to the
infection of my brains‖ (1.2.144); ―I have
drunk, and seen the spider‖ (2.1.45)
Camillo. ―‖in rebellion with himself‖ (1.2.354)
Polixenes. ―then my best blood turn / To an
infected jelly‖ (1.2.416-417)

The Whole Kingdom is Ill
Paulina. I come to bring him sleep. ‗Tis such as
you
That creep like shadows by him and do sigh
At each his needless heavings, such as you
Nourish the cause of his awaking. I
Do come with words as medicinal, as true—
Honest as either—to purge him of that humour
That presses him from sleep. (2.3.33-39)

Paulina‘s ―Cure‖
Paulina. I dare be sworn.
These dangerous, unsafe lunes
I‘the‘King, beshrew them!
He must be told on‘t, and he shall; the office
Becomes a woman best. I‘ll take‘t upon me;
If I prove honey-mouthed, let my tongue blister,
…The silence often of pure innocence
Persuades when speaking fails. (2.2.28-32; 40-1)

Authority?
Paulina. I care not;
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in it. I‘ll not call you tyrant;
But this most cruel usage of your Queen,
Not able to produce more accusation
Than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savours
Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,
Yea, scandalous to the world.(2.3.115-20)

The Oracle
Officer. ‗Hermione is chaste, Polixenes
blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a
jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly
begotten, and the King shall live without an heir if
that which is lost be not found.‘
(3.2.130-134)

Leontes Denies
There is no truth at all i‘th‘ oracle. / The sessions
shall proceed; this is mere falsehood.
Apollo‘s angry, and the heavens themselves / Do
strike at my injustice.
(3.2.138-139; 144-145)

Leontes Cedes Power
Leontes. Thou didst speak well
When most the truth, which I receive much better
Than to be pitied of thee. (3.2.230-232)

Conclusion
Counter-magic to combat evil
Alternative to violent and tyrannical authority
Infection caused by ideology of absolute rule

Final Exam Information
1.5-hour Exam on eLearning
no excuses for technical difficulty, so start early
(email if crash & I can reset)
open from 12/14 at 8am until 12/17 at 5pm
3 IDs (45 minutes)
1 essay question (45 minutes)
contribute question/revision via eLearning before
12/10
drawn from the three you choose as a class on
12/12

Passage Identification
In your answers to these questions you must: 1.
Identify the name of the work; 2. Identify the context
of the passage (what happens before and after
and, where appropriate, the speaker); 3. Discuss the
significance of the passage in its context; 4. Discuss
the significance of the passage in terms of the larger
themes of the work in which it appears; and 5.
Discuss how each passage contributes to the
meaning of its work overall. You will earn the majority
of the points in this section for a thoughtful discussion
of the passage‘s significance supported by evidence
from the passage. Please pay specific attention to
the language of the passage in your discussion.

Essay
Questions should
be about works since the midterm;
ask the writer to draw connections across multiple
works;
and be complex enough to require 45 minutes to
answer.

Papers Due 12/10 by 5pm
I will be in my office 10-11:15am that day for last-
minute questions about your paper; please come
by or email.