The Winter’s Tale

by: Trace Calloway

REFLECTIVE INTRODUCTION

As I read through some of Shakespeare’s plays that I had not managed to read, I noticed that The Winter’s Tale incorporates several elements of genre shifting. I decided to reread the play paying attention to symbols, language use, and generic conventions with regards to the various readings on genre that we’ve examined during this class. Often genre is perceived as static, a series of boxes that stories fit neatly into. The Winter’s Tale, however, shows how misguided this conception is. There is no box or category that fully encapsulates the complexity of Shakespeare’s later plays, especially The Winter’s Tale, which occupies the spaces between traditional genres.

ABSTRACT

The Winter’s Tale was one of Shakespeare’s later plays and has given reviewers and critics considerable trouble in its classification. The play includes conventions of several genres, containing elements of tragedy, comedy, and pastoral romance all under the title of a winter’s tale—a specific and separate genre in its own right. The Winter’s Tale fits in none of these categories nor is it simply a combination of them. It defies the generic conventions of each of its constituent parts at one moment or the other and ultimately transcends them, becoming a never-before-seen genre. The text is self-conscious of its role as a piece of art, commenting on the purpose and value of art in nature throughout. I argue that, through the play’s emphasis on symbols of rebirth in nature, it is a representation and example of the continually ongoing transformation of genres.

The term ‘late comedy’ can be applied to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, but in differentiating it solely on its temporal status, it neglects a description of its content, structure, and style. The play is extremely self-conscious of its role as a work of art and offers a dialogue on its own nature and the role of rebirth in art. Maurice Blanchot argues that modern literature is defined by genre breaking, and he claims “authors of our era” experience “that impetuous impulse of literature that no longer tolerates the distinction of genres and wants to shatter the limits.” Well before the concept of modernity, however, The Winter’s Tale pushed against the generic boundaries of the time and brought together diverse elements from separate genres, creating a heterogeneous play that defies conventional generic terms and gives life to a hitherto unseen sort of art.

The name of the play is the first indication that the play will be defying expectations. Traditionally a winter’s tale is inconsequential, told to wile the time away until spring. The stories are often fantastical and traditionally associated with femininity, so the title seems to suggest the play will be a romance in line with this tradition. However, Mamillius disputes this notion early on, saying “A sad tale’s best for winter” and conveying a sense of the tale’s significance and seriousness (2.1.25). Anis Bawarshi in “The Genre Function” discusses the idea of the author-function and the role the reader’s expectations play in reception (339). The events of a play, for instance, are interpreted based on the expected genre of the work. The Winter’s Tale exhibits this by providing the illusion of a romance from the onset, then shifting the tone and acting against the viewer’s expectations for a heightened sense of the importance placed on such tales. This play is no mere tale awaiting the rebirth of a new season. It is the winter’s tale, the simultaneous epitome and transcendence of the fanciful genre that, rather than waiting for, creates its own sense of rebirth.

The Winter’s Tale is highly self-conscious of its status as art and the role of art in general. Perdita and Polixenes discuss the genuineness of art in terms of nature through their talk of gillyvors. Perdita claims that these flowers are worth less than those that grow naturally apart from any sort of artifice; since “There is an art which in their piedness shares With great creating nature,” they are bastards and not fit to share space with ‘pure’ flowers. Polixenes disagrees and points out that art is equally part of nature and “Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes”. He then takes the argument one step further by adding that art, which is natural, improves upon nature through the grafting of one flower to another. In the same way that husbandry can hybridize carnations into a new superior flower, dramaturgy can graft comedy onto a tragedy and create a new genre that fits no previously conceived category.

The first three acts of The Winter’s Tale have an aura of tragedy, combining the jealousy of Othello with the pride and responsibility of Macbeth. Leontes’ irrational jealousy is a characteristic fatal flaw that harms himself, his loved ones, and his kingdom. A bear kills good-hearted Antigonus, Hermione dies of a broken heart, and the friendship between Leontes and Polixenes is broken.  This tragic tone, however, is not long sustained, nor is it indicative of the genre of the whole.

After the huge temporal shift before the fourth act, the nature of the play changes dramatically. A comedy is grafted on. As Bazerman notes, through “implicitly recognizable kinds of language, phrasing, and genres, every text evokes particular social worlds where such language and language forms are used”, and the language shift between these two parts of the play is stark indeed (4). In the beginning Leontes uses metaphors of nature to describe treacherous acts such as cuckolds having “his pond fish’d by his next neighbour” and as insults when he his wife is “as rank as any flax-wench” (1.2.18, 28). The second part is focused on the pastoral Bohemia full of growth and bounty where natural metaphors are used to describe peace and contentment and the repentant Sicilia seeks redemption. They talk of the beautiful in flowers, in the “Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram” and “The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun” (4.4.37-38). The people celebrate in the fields and rejoice at the change in season. The transition results in an ending commensurate with a comedy where families are reconciled, marriages are promised, and social order is once again restored. This comic conclusion is completely unforeseeable based on the tragic acts that came before.

Hybridization is never a sure process, however, and there always remains the possibility that the graft will not take. The Winter’s Tale though is successful precisely because the bond holds and, despite its disparate parts, forms a cohesive whole. The parallels between the milieus of Bohemia and Sicilia and the structures of the two temporally separate sections bind the two sections together. For instance, the elements of romance that run throughout help the audience suspend their disbelief and become more receptive to the generic shifting. In a world where oracles speak the truth, men believe they can find “fairy gold”, and bears suddenly and conveniently appear to kill off a character expectations are fluid and constantly being subverted. The play therefore can be less diligent about following the strict guidelines of any one genre’s conventions. The fluidity of genre creates a naming problem since no name fits nor does a combination of names fare any better. Tragicomic pastoral romance becomes meaningless as a term because the play breaks the boundaries between genres and works in opposition to each piece of the name at different points. The Winter’s Tale can’t properly be called a tragedy because it’s characters are redeemed, can’t be fully a comedy because the beginning is much too dark, can’t truly be a romance because everything is also explainable in perfectly natural terms. All the conventions of its composite genres are at one moment accepted then resolutely rejected.

This breaking of convention and transcendence of previous genres is emphasized by the play’s focus on rebirth. Perdita and Florizel’s arrival in Sicilia brings the natural vitality of youth and the pastoral world to a court grown aged and cheerless. Whereas before, Leontes used bucolic metaphors negatively, he now welcomes Florizel’s company as “the spring to th’earth” (5.1.150). Leontes finally admits his own barrenness, and he is now readier to accept new growth after his penance has prepared his heart like a farmer tilling the soil in anticipation of planting. It is only after a genre’s conventions are revealed and broken that it can adapt and grow into something new.

Autolycus perfectly represents this idea of adaptation, as he is constantly being reborn into new characters as he changes outfits and goes from victim to peddler to lord. His current attire has power over other characters’ expectations like when the clown and shepherd are fooled by “the air of the court” in his “enfoldings” (4.4.697). Just as Autolycus has power based on expectations, The Winter’s Tale too influences the viewer as they first interpret the play as a tragedy then slowly shifts their understanding to a more comic ending. Autolycus’ power stems from his protean nature, and if he were static and unchanging he would no longer be effective in the world. The Winter’s Tale must evolve the genre of the play for this same purpose. Tsvetan Todorov writes “There has never been a literature without genres; it is a system in continual transformation.” The play acts as a microcosm of this systemic change, displaying the ongoing physical transformations in the various characters and the metaphysical or metaliterative transformation of the tragic and comic genres. Both concepts are perpetually in a state of becoming.

The treatment of Hermione’s death has a complicated duality and is representative of how The Winter’s Tale is playing with the multiplicity of genre and in-betweeness. It attempts to explain Hermione’s return in both human terms and the supernatural. It is at the same time a miraculous resurrection and a mundane restoration. Hermione exists as both dead and alive at different moments in the play, and neither explanation is ever confirmed. Paulina affirms her death saying, “I say she’s dead. I’ll swear’t” and even offers to let Leontes “go and see” the body to confirm it himself (3.2.200). The ghost’s later appearance would seem to confirm her death and would match the romantic elements of the story. Then Paulina talks about the statue as if she is really going to bring it back to life and her chant is certainly reminiscent of an incantation. It is only in light of Paulina’s offer to take the “office to choose [Leontes] a new queen”, her visits “twice or thrice a day” to “that removed house”, and her protestations not to touch the statue that her death is ever in doubt. It would seem that the previous suppositions are here subverted, and Hermione’s continued life becomes the new truth. One truth now replaces the old in the audience’s mind.

However the issue is never settled. Polixesnes’ mandate is not met: “make it manifest where she has lived or has stol’n from the dead!” (5.3.114). There is no commitment to either the natural or the supernatural. Even when Hermione says “thou shalt hear that I…have preserved myself to see the issue”, which sounds an awful lot like her absence was of her own agency rather than her death, her statement that she learned from Paulina “that the oracle gave hope” that her daughter was alive doesn’t fit. The real Hermione was in the room when the oracle spoke, and only an artificial or revived statue would have had to be informed of her daughter’s condition. Hermione exists as both natural and supernatural and is not limited by either. She is neither wholly one or the other. The Winter’s Tale exists in the same sort of space where fantasy and plausibility collide and tragedy and comedy merge.

Carolyn Miller defines genre as “a specific, and important, constituent of society, a major aspect of its communicative structure, one of the structures of power that institutions wield” (71). Society is constituted by genres, which themselves have constituents that combine to create the cohesive whole out of their various conventions. Normally genres derive their power from following these conventions and operating within an audience’s expectations, but The Winter’s Tale moves beyond the limitations of its composition and becomes a new genre separate from those that formed it. It is reborn as neither a comedy nor tragedy, neither a tragicomedy nor tragicomic pastoral romance. The play becomes wholly other and requires a new nomenclature.

This generic transcendence is a continually ongoing process, which is represented by the end of the play. The two pending marriages are signs of a new beginning rather than an ending. There are still individual stories to tell and no guarantee it will all go well. The ending provides a general trajectory, not a sense of finality or closure. Leontes is given a second chance; he is not shown returned to the way he was because it would take “a thousand knees, ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, upon a barren mountain, and still winter in storm perpetual could not move the gods took that way” (3.2.207). He is given an opportunity to effect that redemption he has gone through the motions of, but there is no promise that it will be enough. Does he really think the prayers he said over his wife’s grave were in vain (5.3.139), or does he understand they were necessary as part of his redemption? And does he understand he must continue the redemptive process and he must not return to his old habits? Obviously the play answers none of these questions; the audience can only guess as to how the play would continue.

The Winter’s Tale is not the endpoint in generic modifications, but is another step in the process as it moves beyond its constituent elements and becomes something new. Like the hybrid gillyflower, it requires a new name to encapsulate its essence rather than relying on the old terms of an outdated classification system. The play itself is a rebirthing of the storytelling art amid the literal rebirth of spring, new marriages, and the redemption and repentance of Leontes.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis. “The Genre Function.” College English 62.3 (2000): 335. Web.

Bazerman, Charles. “Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts.” (n.d.): n. pag. Cdh.sc.edu. University of California at Santa Barbara. Web. <cdh.sc.edu/~hawkb/readings/bazerman_intertextuality.pdf>.

Belsey, Catherine. “Critical Practice.” (1980): n. pag. Web.

Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale. Ed. John Henry Pyle. Pafford. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2000. Print.

Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Origin of Genres.” Ed. Richard M. Berrong. New Literary History 8.1 (1976): 159. Web.