Hello!
I'm Michael Witmore, I'm the Director of the
Folger Shakespeare Library.
And I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you about "The Winter's Tale," which happens to be my
favorite play.
Why is "The Winter's Tale" my favorite play?
I think that it is the one moment in Shakespeare's
plays where he most directly says to the audience,
"I need your hopes and your wishes to make
possible the illusion and the magic of theater."
Why does it work that way?
Well, "The Winter's Tale," like many of the
late plays that Shakespeare wrote, actually
includes incidents where someone does something
terrible.
I won't be spoiling the play for you, because
it happens right at the beginning: there's
a terrible mistake made by a king, Leontes,
which has real and lasting consequences for
everyone in the play.
The play really focuses on how and why he will be forgiven.
And, at the end of this play, there is a moment when the audience is thinking about what it
wants to have happen.
How could you forgive someone for doing something this awful?
And does he deserve it?
The audience also wants to see some reunions,
and a family reconciliation.
So, the way Shakespeare built this play, he
wanted it to end at a moment when the audience's
desire for things to work out is at its maximum.
And, because this is an adult play—it's
called "The Winter's Tale," which is the
kind of story you'd tell by the fire in the
winter, but it's not for children—because
this is an adult play, I think Shakespeare
knows that the kinds of decisions that people
have made, and the kind of world they live
in, is not the world we want to live in.
There are real disappointments in the play,
as there are in life.
But, the play also says that we all have,
possibly, within us, a driving wish to see
something right happen after things have gone
wrong.
And the play says that, in the end, that wish
is possibly the most real thing, certainly
in the world of the theater.
What I love about this play is the way it
invites the audience—that sense of longing
and hopefulness that comes from having lived
through hard things, and things that haven't
worked out—the play really unleashes that
desire in the audience.
And then, magically, it satisfies that desire.
I hope that you really enjoy this production,
and I look forward to seeing it
and to hearing what you think.
