Tags
Seeing The Winter’s Tale performed this weekend in the Shakespeare Theatre’s Free for All, I was reminded of the story of Hero and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. In both a lover accuses his beloved of adultery, and in both the pretended death of the beloved brings the lover to repent his folly, until in both the couple are resurrected into a happier life together. But you can tell that The Winter’s Tale was written by an older man. Here there is no Don John to make the suggestion of infidelity to the gullible Claudio. The jealous husband Leontes is mad enough to think up the idea himself. And here there is not one night, but sixteen years between death and resurrection. Indeed Time herself is a character in the play, telling of this long intermission. Here are no youthful passions, quickly changed in the blinking of an eye from love to jealousy to guilt to grief to joy. At the end of the first half, Leontes asks to be shown the bodies of his dead wife and son:
Come and lead me / Unto these sorrows.
And he stays with these sorrows, visiting their tombs every day. He is permitted to grieve like every other bereaved human, living with his sorrows day after day, month after month, year after year, until we recognize as true his transformation into a penitent and faithful husband. It’s not that he needs to be punished for all these years, but he needs all these years to really change. I for one think Hero shouldn’t have taken Claudio back so easily. But give Claudio another sixteen years, and I hope his repentance would be found as genuine as Leontes’s.
The third difference between the plays comes in the moment of resurrection. In Much Ado, it’s clear Hero was pretending to be dead. But the audience is given no such insider knowledge in The Winter’s Tale. We too are in the dark until we go with Leontes to see the unbelievably life-like statue of his wife Hermione and watch with him the statue come to life. Was it magic, as Paulina said? Or had Hermione been secretly alive all this time and was she now posing as a statue? It’s never made clear, and I don’t think it matters. To Leontes, this is magic, no matter the facts of the case. This production did a fantastic job making this scene magical. The ever present court set was removed, the wide open stage was lit by many hanging lights which looked like stars against the black shadow behind them. The actress playing Hermione held perfectly still, and came to life with such slow movements, truly seeming a statue just awoken, that one could easily join Leontes’s wonder. The essential line is this:
It is required / You do awake your faith.
Leontes has repented these long years. Now, it is time for forgiveness. As always, Shakespeare’s insight into the human condition is unparalleled. For humans will go repenting and sorrowing and grieving for as long as time endures. But forgiveness and joy and reconciliation: these will ever be magic unto the penitent, requiring indeed an awakening of faith.