The Bard's Work Review #3: The Winter's Tale

Ah, the Winter's Tale. What a terrific play.........for the first 60% of the play. Then it becomes an almost comical failure of a play. HOWEVER, it doesn't really lose its entertainment value, and I believe I've surmised the reason for the play's weaknesses in its latter half. "The Winter's Tale" is routinely listed as one of Shakespeare's weaker works (or "problem plays" as it is often referred by), but that isn't to say there is no quality within the play; the reality is it's just......misguided.

So What is The Play About Anyway?

The play begins with two friends, Leontes and Polixenes, who have known each other since their youth and now are both Kings of different locales, but have decided to spend time with one another as friends in Leontes's kingdom. Polixenes feels compelled to get back to his own kingdom, but Leontes is enjoying his company and hopes for him to stay. Thinking his own requests for him to remain will fall on deaf ears, he sends his pregnant Queen, Hermoine (no, not the wizard girl from that book series, but this IS where she got her name), to persuade him. Polixenes is convinced.......in fact, he is a little too quickly convinced for Leontes' tastes, as a matter of fact. Leontes starts to believe that the wife HE sent to convince Polixenes to stay to hang out is enjoying illicit activities with Polixenes that are usually accompanied by scented candles and Barry White. He also begins to believe the baby she is carrying is actually Polixenes, and not his own. Since Leontes' problem handling and research skills are apparently non-existant, Leontes logical next course of action is "What? This crap isn't gonna fly! Fetch me a Sicilian who will poison that cheating dog!".

His plan would probably go off with a hitch too; the only problem is, the Sicilian in question, Camillo, instead warns Polixenes that his best friend has experienced a drop in general hospitality. They both flee for their lives, leaving Hermoine to be arrested by her husband, feeling he has to take vengeance on someone for an act of adultery that seems to have clearly never occurred. Hermoine gives birth to the baby in prison, but the baby is sent out of the kingdom by Leontes, as he believes it to be a bastard. Despite Hermoine's repeated attempts to convince Leontes she was faithful to him, he still insists she is guilty. Even a freaking ORACLE says Hermoine is innocent of wrongdoing, but Leontes refuses to acknowledge; things come to a head when Leontes' son, Mamillus, dies from the anxiety and pain the whole ordeal caused, which in turn makes Hermoine lose consciousness and she seemingly perishes as well. Leontes' then realizes that he was wrong and vows to mourn the death of Hermoine and Mamillus until his death. Well then, that sounds like a reasonable apology after driving them to death.

This is where the play REALLY starts to get a little bizarre. A gentleman named Antigonus has taken the baby of Hermoine out of the kingdom as per Leontes' orders. He ultimately names it Perdita, and pities the child and considers being protective over it......the only problem is a bear then comes out of nowhere in the play and eats Antigonus. Seriously. There's even a great stage direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear". At times, Shakespeare sounds like a Warner Bros. cartoon at times. Perdita is ultimately found by a rich shepherd and raised by him instead.

Then like a bad soap opera that has written itself into a corner, the play skips ahead 16 years. The son of Polixeness, the friend who fleed for his life from Leontes' early on, is in love with Perdita, the daughter of Leontes' and wants to marry. Polixenes initially objects to this idea, but then a strange drifter named Autolycus reveals Perdita to be Leontes' daughter, and then he thinks that might not be a half-bad idea, what with the kingdom's having a link and all. Once the marriage is done, they all decide to pay their respects to Hermoine by visiting a statue that has been made of her. In a miracle moment.....or a moment of a great writer not knowing what the hell he is doing.......the statue becomes a real human version of Hermoine, and she is reunited with Leontes'! And the play therefore ends with a happy ending.......doesn't it? Does anyone even know? Can anyone even explain the last two acts of this idiotic play and why it went the direction it did? Is Shakespeare trolling me?

My Thoughts

As you can observe from the summary, this play actually begins as a slightly far-fetched but rather compelling story of mistrust and paranoia. On a psychology level it is a very captivating story; nevermind the fact that Leontes' could have done a little bit more investigating rather than drive an entire play on a lark regarding his wife's fidelity; the play works and presents some interesting ideas for the first half of the play.............and then a drifter gets eaten by a random bear. And this moment of "Monty Python" absurdity, while rather amusing, then leads to the play spiraling out of control and further into absurdity, culminating in statues turning into living, breathing humans, humans who, mind you, were thought to have died earlier in the play. So either the statue is some new spin on the zombie mythos (maybe), some Christ allusion, albeit slightly subtle (doubtful), or a writer who wrote one play and then decided to delve into a different genre and screwed it up royally (BINGO!). I think what happened here is Shakespeare was attempting to write a tragedy of sorts, but in the end developed it into a romance. Most romances of the time ended with a marriage and typically with a happy ending as well. And I think this is the fact that hindered the play. If the play ended with Leontes' losing his wife and child to his paranoia, that would have made for a far more compelling and interesting story than it does with the ending that's tacked on. It's a blatantly poor conclusion that takes a flawed but reasonably solid play and lowers its quality dramatically. Granted, the entertainment value is still there; the last two acts, as bad as they are, have a certain charm in how campy and dumb the writing is for that part. It is also interesting to see a writer who is as skilled a storyteller as Shakespeare have a film that is so clearly a misfire. Fun note as well: The Winter's Tale, along with Ben Jonson's play "The Alchemist" are the first two published works to mention the word "dildo" (you know, that pleasure device found in those shops that smell like cooking oil mixed with Vasoline?). Because the actual publication date for each play is up for debate, it is unknown which play took the honor first. Wouldn't Shakespeare be far more interesting in the classroom if these details were more publicly shared?