Hi everyone it's Lauren and welcome back
to another episode in my series on
Shakespeare. I have done a lot of other
videos ranging from how to read
Shakespeare, how to approach him and some
individual videos on specific plays as
well so if you're interested in watching
some more after this video I leave a
link to the series in the description
box below. Today we're going to be
looking at The Winter's Tale and I'm
going to start as usual with a brief
summary of the plot and then we're going
to get into a wider discussion on the
themes and characters.Tthe play opens
with the king of Sicil,y Leontes and his
wife Hermione who have been hosting
Leontes his childhood friend Polixenes
who is the King of Bohemia for the
last nine months, but Polixenes wants to
go home and Leontes says no please stay
you're my friend, Polixenes
says no no no I need to go home see why
I've seen my family but when Queen
Hermione asked Polixenes to stay he
changes his mind and says you okay for
you I'll stay and this very small
interaction then gets into Leontes his
head that Hermione and Polixenes have
been having an affair and the child that
Hermione is carrying is not his and it
actually belongs to his friend and very
very quickly Leontes goes down into a
spiral of jealousy and fear he decides
he wants to kill Polixenes, he sends
a man to kill him although his servant
Camillo instead of killing him warns
Polixenes that this is what's going to
happen and they both of them flee to
Bohemia, and he throws his wife Hermione
in prison where she then gives birth
to their daughter
Despite Hermione's hand woman Paulina
bringing the baby to Leontes and saying
look she's definitely yours she's so
beautiful
the queen is innocent you must forgive
her, Leontes will hear of it from
nobody. So convinced is he that the baby
is not his that he orders Paulina's
husband to take the baby away and
abandon it in some desolate place. He is
utterly convinced that she's guilty and
puts her on trial for adultery while she
is on trial they get word that the
couple's young son Mamillius has died
he's a young boy of about seven or eight
and he supposedly dies from the fear and
the trauma of his mother being thrown
into prison and being put on trial on
hearing this
Hermione then collapses in the courtroom
and dies of a broken heart. Word then
comes back from the Oracle in Delphi that
he sent out to ask whether his wife was
innocent or not word comes back that she
is in fact in a
and it was all in his head and so
Leontes is now left without his wife
without his son and without his baby
daughter who has been taken by Paulina's
husband Antigonus to the shores of
Bohemia where he is then beset by the
most famous stage direction in
shakespeare 'exit pursued by a bear' so he
is killed before he is able to return
back to Sicily. Luckily though the baby
daughter is found by a shepherd and his
son and raised as one of their own and
given the name Perdita. Time then passes
in fact a personified character of time
comes on to the stage to tell the
audience that 16 years have passed and
since the baby was abandoned since and
Hermione was killed and we open with
Perdita as a young woman who has fallen
in love with a young man could Florizel
who is in fact Pollixenes's son so
Polixenes is very unhappy with
this, that his son is fallen in love with
a shepherd's daughter so Pollixenes
and Camillo go undercover at a
sheep-shearing feast where Florizel and
Perdita are to be betrothed and just at
the point where they do become betrothed
he throws off his disguise and tells his
son that he cannot be married to a lowly
shepherdess. Camillo then sort of switches
sides and allows Florizel and Perdita to
escape to back to Sicily where he is
keen to return. Once in Sicily Florizel
introduces himself to the court of King
Leontes introduces his bride and it's
not until Polixenes catches up with them
but they all discover but Perdita is in
fact Leontes's lost daughter and
that's okay because Polixenes is okay
with Florizel marrying a princess of
Sicily. So everything is restored with
the second generation and then the very
strangest thing that happens in the play
occurs right at the end where Paulina
and comes to tell the whole party that
she has a statue of Hermione that she's
been building for the last 16 years
she unveils it to everybody and as if by
magic this statue of Hermione comes to
life and it's revealed that she has in
fact been alive for these 16 years in
hiding. So everything is very
resolved, Leontes gets his wife, he gets
his daughter back and considering a very
very dark place where we started this
play in the first three acts the
resolution is actually very very happy
The Winter's Tale is one of
Shakespeare's later plays and the title
itself The Winter's Tale
is a hint to the
fact that this isn't something that's
supposed to be taken extremely seriously
a lot of what happens in the plot
shouldn't be based in fact, it's very
unrealistic even down to Perdita being
left on a beach in Bohemia when Bohemia
didn't have a coastline. It's really
not the same as one of the big history
plays or something to be taken more
seriously like Macbeth, this is just a
nice tale where although it has tragedy
it has comedy it has romance everything
is going to be resolved at the end of it
One could argue what is going on in
Leontes his psyche which means he is so
so quick to denounce his wife and best
friend
why he is so jealous? why he is
so self-destructive and what he hates
seems to hate women so much? and there's
quite a lot going on there but to me
this isn't one of those characteristics
that you can get very very deep into I
think it's just a plot device that's
just the setting the scene for the whole
story to come to unfold. Leontes is
jealous - that's what we need to exist in
order for the story to happen. It really
is a play of two halves and one of the
big themes in it is that of time the
idea of this passage of time that
happens in the middle of the play but
also the idea of time standing still so
in the first half we have Leontes
in Sicily, there's a lot of pain a lot of
anguish, jealousy, suffering and it's a
very cold dark wintry environment where
this is happening and when Florizel and
Perdita arrived back in sicily 16 years
later it seems like time hasn't passed
there at all the king is still in
anguish he hasn't remarried, the kingdom
itself is very worried that there aren't
any heirs to the throne anymore and it's
almost as though this suffering, this
pain has just continued. Contrasting this
with Florizal and Perdita in Bohemia it's
very bright it's very new it's very
reminiscent of spring, Perdita and
Florizal are really are like the second
chances of their parents to either
repeat the same mistakes or go down a
different path and reconcile their
families and make amends for the past so
is simultaneously looking back at what
happened 16 years ago what has happened
within that time and also pushing
forward for the future of Florizel and
Perdita togethe.rTthe issue of Hermione
and the statue is also a
kind of interesting instance of time and
when Paulina unveils the statue, originally
everyone remarks that the statue is aged
it's not Hermione as she would have
looked when she died it's how she would
have looked if she had lived and
continued to age which of course it is
hinted at in the text that is exactly
what happens, this isn't actually a
magical second chance given to Leontes,
but then that is playing with the idea
of second chances and whether time can
be reversed and Leontes has lived for
16 years almost in stasis, in grief
thinking that his whole family is dead
and Hermione then it transpires has been
alive she comes back to him 16 years
later but their son Mamillius is dead
he is still gone, so even
though he's had his daughter restored to
him and his wife we still do get a sense
of the permanence of the son's death as
well so it's a really interesting mix of
the resolution at the end of the play
and everything being happy but it's still
tinged with that tragedy from the earlier
acts. Although this is meant to be a
lighter tale designed to entertain and
not designed to be an analysis of the
human psyche, it is actually interesting
to compare this to some of Shakespeare's
other works and how he handles other
themes such as jealousy revenge and
young love as well. I think there's some
interesting parallels between this story
and Romeo and Juliet, where you have two
warring factions two families who hate
each other and then the younger
generation coming together could be the
thing that finally puts this family
feud to rest, it could unite the families
although it ends in tragedy, the families
do end up reuniting and putting their
feud aside at the end and in The
Winter's Tale there's something fairly
similar about Perdita and Florizel
coming together and Polixenes and
Leontes who had been such close friends
as children being able to put aside
their quarrel and be rehabilitated to
each other. Leontes as a character is
also interesting in comparison to
someone like Othello, who also suspects
his wife of adultery of which she is
entirely innocent although in that
situation you have the secondary
character of Iago filling Othello's
head with lies and really pushing this
forward and baiting him onwards
to destroy his own marriage whereas
Leontes seems to do that all by
himself with no outside help at all. In
fact everybody in his court are very
convinced of the Queen's innocence and
are trying to dissuade him from this
course of action. There's an interesting
theory that this situation could be a
mirroring of what happened between Henry
the eighth and Anne Boleyn, famously
Anne Boleyn was beheaded on charges of
adultery and along with other men who
were convicted of being her lovers
although it does seem to be on extremely
shaky ground whether that was true and
there can be some mirroring between Anne
Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth the first
who was then lost in her in a way at
least banished from succession and very
similar to the way Perdita is lost from
Leontes and then at the end of the day
restored again to his love in the way
that Elizabeth first obviously then did
come and succeed to the throne. In terms
of adaptations of The Winter's Tale
there have been several, I only have
personal experience not with any
adaptations of the stage play as itself
but wider interpretations such as
Jeanette Winterson book The Gap of Time
which is a reimagining of The Winter's
Tale. I would not recommend this at all I
didn't think it was very good so if
you're looking for something else to
read that isn't Shakespeare
I would I would actually steer clear of
that book! Something that I did really
really enjoy was Christopher Wheeldon's
ballet which was developed for the Royal
Ballet a few years ago which is
absolutely beautiful, visually not just
from the dancing and the choreography
itself but also from the set design, the
costumes it really brings to life the
different moods especially of the
different heart of the play and because
ballet by its nature is hyper-real and
very theatrical I think that works with
the idea of someone being a statue and
then coming back to life and some of the
odd things that happen in The Winter's
Tale I think you can almost believe it
more if it's happening as part of a
ballet or something that's very
over-the-top as opposed to a very
naturalistic and staging of it. I would
love to hear from you in the comments
what you thought of The Winter's Tale if
there's any other themes any other
characters and any other ideas you have
about the play and also let me know what
other plays you'd like me to talk about
in this series are there any other elements
in general of Shakespeare that you'd
like me to discuss? what aspects of his
work do you enjoy, what aspects do you
find difficult? and I'll see you in my
next video, bye!
