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Part I Greek 6 The Winter's Tale

The winter's tale is a romance It has no historical basis whatever and none of the events it describes ever occurred; nor are any of its characters to be found in history, however glancingly Nevertheless, its background lies in the pre-Christian Greek world I therefore include it a the Greek plays

It see been written as late as 1611 The only later play for which Shakespeare was solely responsible was The Tempest

, the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia

The play opens with two courtiers exchanging graceful compliments The scene is set in Sicilia (Sicily) and one of the courtiers, Camillo, is native to the place The other is a vistor from Bohemia

The occasion is a state visit paid to Sicily by the King of Bohemia, and there may be a return visit in consequence Camillo says:

I think this co of Sicilia

means to pay Bohemia the visitation

which he justly owes him

- Act I, scene i, lines 5-7

There is a queer reversal here Shakespeare takes the plot frolish writer Robert Greene, entitled Pandosto The Triuinal ro of Sicily to Bohemia, rather than the reverse This reversal is carried all through the play, with the King of Sicily in The Winter's Tale playing the role of the King of Bohemia in Pandosto, and vice versa

Did Shakespeare in with and then carry it through because he was too lazy to take the trouble to correct it? Or did he have soood reason?-I suspect the latter

The King who is being visited behaves, in the first portion of the play, as an al be the King of Bohe of Sicily, as in Shakespeare?

Suppose we look back into history In 405 bc, just ten years after the ill-fated Sicilian expedition of Athens (see page I-140), a general, Dionysius, seized control over Syracuse, the largest and strongest city of Sicily By 383 bc he had united almost the entire island under his rule

Dionysius is best known for the ht years in an era when rulers were regularly overthrown by palace coups or popular unrest He did so by unending suspicion and eternal vigilance For instance, there is a story that he had a bell-shaped cha into the state prison, with the narrow end connecting to his room In this way, he could secretly listen to conversations in the prison and learn if any conspiracies were brewing This has been called the "ear of Dionysius"

He arrested people on mere suspicion and his suspicion was most easily aroused Naturally, he left the h he died in peace, he is remembered as a cruel and suspicious tyrant

If Shakespeare had to choose between Bohemia and Sicily as a place to be ruled by a tyrant, was it not sensible to choose Sicily?

Of course, King Leontes of Sicily, the character in the play, is not to be equated with Dionysius The Sicilian tyrant of old may simply have made Sicily seem the more appropriate scene for tyranny, but there all rese in the play has any relationship to the life of Dionysius

Nevertheless, because of this tenuous connection between Leontes and Dionysius, and the fact that Dionysius lived a generation after Ti this play immediately after Timon of Athens

As for Bohemia Later in the play there will be scenes of idyllic pastoral happiness in the kingdodom then be Sicily, as in Greene, or Bohemia, as in Shakespeare?

To be sure, in ancient tiranary of early Roht therefore be viewed as an idyllic place in contrast to citified and vice-ridden Rome itself However, Sicily was also noted for its brutal wars between the Greeks and Carthage and, later, the Roe Still later, it was the scene of horrible slave rebellions

What of Bohemia by contrast? The Bohemia we know is the westernmost part of modern Czechoslovakia and is no more a pastoral idyll than anywhere else This Bohemia is inhabited by a Slavic people, in Shakespeare's tiin, as a Slavic nation, dates back to perhaps the eighth century, so like a thousand years after the time of Dionysius

This discrepancy in time did not bother Greene, or Shakespeare either, and would not bother us in reading the play However, is it necessarily our

the winter's tale 149

present real-life Bohe of? Was there another?

Shortly after 1400, bands of strange people reached central Europe They were swarthy-skinned noe that was not like any in Europe Soypt and they were called "gypsies" in consequence (They still are called that in the United States, but their real origin may have been India)

When the gypsies reached Paris in 1427, the French knew only that they had come from central Europe There were reports that they had come from Bohemia, and so the French called them Bohemians (and still do)

The gypsy life seeabondish and must have been attractive to those bound to heavy labor or dull routine The term "Bohemian" therefore came to be applied to artists, writers, show people, and others living an unconventional and apparently vagabondish life Boheinary story land of romance

Well then, if Shakespeare wanted a land of pastoral innocence and delights, should he pick Sicily or Bohemia? -Bohemia, by all means

tremor cordis

The courtiers let the audience know that Leontes of Sicily and Polixenes of Bohemia were childhood friends and have close ties of affection In the next scene, when the two kings coe themselves, this is made perfectly clear

Polixenes has been away fro affairs es him strenuously to remain, and when Polixenes is adamant, the Sicilian host asks his Queen, Hermione, to join her pleas with his She does, and after joyful badinage, Polixenes gives in

Then, quite suddenly, without warning at all, a shadow falls over Leontes He watches his gay Queen and the friend she is cajoling (at Leontes' own request) and he says in an aside:

Too hot, too hot!

Tobloods

I have tremor cordis on me

- Act I, scene ii, lines 108-10

An unnatural physical effect, a palpitation of the heart ("tremor cordis") has coenial host, without real cause, a jealous tyrant

The sickness grows on itself He wonders if he has been cuckolded (see page I-108) and is at once convinced he is He seeks supporting opinion and consults his courtier, Canizes the situation as a mental illness:

Good my lord, be cured

Of this diseased opinion, and betimes,

For 'tis erous

- Act I, scene ii, lines 296-98

sighted like the basilisk

Cae The King makes it clear that if Camillo were a loyal subject he would poison Polixenes Reluctantly, Ca will then offer no disgrace to his Queen

By noever, Polixenes notes that the waro has vanished and he is aware of an intensifying frigidity He meets Camillo and questions him but Camillo can only speak evasively, and still in the metaphor of sickness:

I cannot naht

Of you, that yet are well

- Act I, scene ii, lines 387-88

He is referring, of course, to the insane jealousy of which Polixenes is the unwitting and undeserved cause Polixenes cannot understand and says:

How caught of hted

like the basilisk I have looked on

thousands, who have sped the better

By ard, but killed none so

- Act I, scene ii, lines 388-91

Another name for the basilisk is the cockatrice, a word that inated as a distortion of crocodile The h he had heard of them in connection with the distant Nile

The crocodile, like the serpent, is a deadly reptile It antic, thick snake, with stubby legs To Europeans, unfamiliar with the crocodile except by distant report, the snaky aspects of the creature could easily become dominant

Once "cockatrice" is forestive, and the fevered iinates in a cock's egg and is a creature with a snake's body and a cock's head

The cockatrice is pictured as the ultimate snake It kills not by a bite but merely by a look Not merely its venom, but its very breath is fatal Because the cockatrice is theof snakes, or because the cockscomb may be pictured as a crown, the cockatrice ca "little king")

Cahten to flee at once Since Ca the ether, they leave Sicily

A sad tale's best

Meanwhile, at the court, Ma a pleasant ti His nancy (Polixenes, remember, had been at the Sicilian court for nine months)

The Queen asks her son for a story, and Mamilius says:

A sad tale's best for winter; I have one

Of sprites and goblins

- Act II, scene i, lines 25-26

There's the reference that gives the play its title The play is a sad tale of death-but also of rebirth For winter does not re

sacred Delphos

The childish tale is interrupted by the arrival of the King and his courtiers Leontes has learned of Polixenes' flight with Camillo and that is the last straw He accuses Hermione of adultery and orders her to prison

Neither her indignant and reasonable claims to innocence nor the shocked testimony of faith in her on the part of his own courtiers will turn Leontes in the slightest His tyranny is in full course now

But he will go this far-he will rely on divine assurance He says:

/ have dispatched in post

To sacred Delphos, to Apollo's temple,

Cleomenes and Dion

- Act II, scene i, lines 182-84

Thiselse proves the play to be placed in ancient Greek tireatest repute

The oracle, a very ancient one, was located on the Greek mainland about six miles north of the center of the Gulf of Corinth and seventy inally called Pytho and it contained a shrine to the earth goddess that was served by a priestess known as the Pythia This priestess could serve as the ods could be made known

The oracle, along with the rest of Greece, was inundated by the Dorian invasion that followed after the Trojan War When Greece began to clihth century bc, Pytho had a new naed It served Apollo rather than the earth goddess

Greek e

Those ive birth to children by Jupiter, the jealous Juno on or giant snake, named Python, to pursue her, for instance Eventually Latona bore twin children, Apollo and Diana Apollo made his way back to Pytho, where the Python made its home, and killed it Apollo then took over the shrine itself and gave it its new nah the priestess remained the Pythia)

For centuries Delphi remained the most important and sacred of all the Greek oracles It was beautified by gifts n rulers It served as a treasury in which people and cities kept their , since no one would dare pollute the sacred shrine by theft

On the other hand, there is also a place called Delos, a tiny island no larger than Manhattan's Central Park, located in the Aegean Sea about a hundred miles southeast of Athens

It too is involved with the tale of Latona and her unborn children Juno, as persecuting Latona in every way possible, had forbidden any port of the earth on which the sun shone to receive her Tiny Delos, however, was a floating island which Jupiter covered aves so that the sun did not shine on it There Apollo and Diana were born Thereafter, Delos was fixed to the sea floor and never ain

As a result, Delos was as sacred to Apollo as Delphi was, and it was easy to confuse the two Thus, one could iine the oracle at Delphi to be located on the island of Delos, and speak of the combination as the "island of Delphos" Greene does this in Pandosto and Shakespeare carelessly follows him

Dame Partlet

In prison, Hermione is delivered of her child and it turns out to be a beautiful little girl Paulina, the wife of the courtier Antigonus, is a bold woue Passionately loyal to Her for the consequences, she offers to take the child to Leontes in the hope that the sight of the babyish innocence ht soften him

With the child, Paulina forces her way into Leontes' presence He won't look at the child and cries out ionus:

Give her the bastard,

Thou dotard, thou art woman-tired, unroosted

By thy Dame Partlet here

- Act II, scene iii, lines 72-74

This refers to an extremely popular s are placed in aniuise, a device that dates back to Aesop in the Western tradition The cycle is known as a whole as "Reynard the Fox," for the fox is the rascal hero (much like Br'er Rabbit in the Uncle Remus stories)

The tales reached their final forrew so popular that soe Even more familiar than "Reynard" for fox is "Bruin" for bear, for instance

"Dary, insulting tones that Paulina is an old biddy who has henpecked her foolish husband into giving up the roost; that is, the do position in the house

Antigonus can scarcely deny it at that When Leontes tells hionus says, resignedly:

Hang all the husbands

That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself

Hardly one subject

- Act II, scene iii, lines 108-10

" of high treason"

Leontes' onus to carry off the baby girl to some desert spot and leave it there to die

The King then gets news that Cleo, and he hastens to prepare a forht out of prison to face her indictment The officer of the court reads it out:

"Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes,

King of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned

of high treason, in co adultery with

Polixenes, King of Bohe with

Can lord the

King, thy royal husband

- Act III, scene ii, lines 12-17

There lishmen, for scarcely three quarters of a century before, not one but two English queens had stood accused of a very sie These were two of the six wives of Henry VIII (who had died in 1547, seventeen years before Shakespeare's birth) One was Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, tried for adultery in 1536, and the other was Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, tried for adultery in 1542 Both were convicted and beheaded, the fore of about twenty-two

The Emperor of Russia

Again Her conviction to all but the insane Leontes While she waits for the word of the oracle, she says:

The Emperor of Russia was my father

Oh that he were alive, and here beholding

His daughter's trial!

- Act III, scene ii, lines 117-19

Russia was not, of course, in existence in the time when Sicily was under Greek doht of history in the ninth century when Viking adventurers from Sweden took over the rule of the land and established a loose congeries of principalities under the vague overlordship of Kiev This "Kievan Russia" was destroyed in 1240 by the Mongol invasion

A century before Shakespeare's birth, however, Russia was beginning to eht In 1462 Ivan III ("the Great") becaed to annex the lands of Novgorod, a northern city, which controlled the sparsely settled lands up to the Arctic Ocean This first gave Muscovy a broad realer in terms of area than that of any other nation in Europe With that, Muscovy became Russia

In 1472 Ivan married the heir to the recently defunct Byzantine Empire and laid claim to the title of Emperor

His successors, Basil III and Ivan IV ("the Terrible"), continued the policy of expansion Ivan IV, who reigned froh Shakespeare's youth, in other words), defeated the reols and extended the Russian realm to the Caspian Sea

Not only did Ivan the Terrible's victories put Russia "on the e of the land In 1553 an English trade mission under Richard Chancellor reached Ivan's court, so that Shakespeare's reference to "The Emperor of Russia" was rather topical

"Hermione is chaste "

Cleoe from Delphos It is opened and read It states:

"Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless,

Camillo a true sub ject, Leontes a jealous tyrant,

his innocent babe truly begot ten, and the

King shall live without an heir,

if that which is lost be not found"

- Act III, scene ii, lines 130-33

This is clear, straightforward, and dramatic-and lacks all resemblance to the kind of oracles actually handed out by the real Delphi In fiction, oracles may interpret present and foretell future with faultless vision; in actual fact, they can do nothing of the sort

The real oracle at Delphi was extreuous statements that could be interpreted as correct no matter what the eventuality The h by no means the only one) took place in 546 bc when Croesus of Lydia, in western Asia Minor, was considering a preventive attack on the growing Persian kingdom to the east of the Halys River, Lydia's boundary

Croesus consulted the oracle at Delphi, of which he was one of the most munificent patrons He was told: "When Croesus passes over the river Halys, he will overthrow the strength of an empire"

Croesus attacked at once, and realized too late that the oracle was carefully phrased so as to remain true whether he won or lost He lost and it was his own realm that was overthrown It is for reasons such as this that "Delphic" and "oracular" have co"

Apollo, pardon

And still Leontes does not give in Like Pharaoh in the Bible, his heart hardens with each new thrust and he dismisses the statement of the oracle as falsehood

But at this veryson, Mamilius, ill since his mother was arrested, has died At the news, Her

The King is stricken The death of his son at the instant of his blaspheainst Apollo punishes that blasphe shall live without an heir") simultaneously

As suddenly as the disease of jealousy had seized upon hiain, and cries out in heartbreak:

Apollo, pardon

My great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle

- Act III, scene ii, lines 150-51

He is anxious now to undo all he has done, but he cannot bring Mamilius back to life, he cannot unkill the Queen, he cannot find the child he has ordered exposed He is doomed to live in endless remorse until "that which is lost" be found

He can only bow his racked body before the harsh and indignant vituperation of Paulina

The deserts of Bohemia

But what of Antigonus and the little baby girl he had been ordered to expose?

In Pandosto the child is given to sailors by the Bohe These take her to the sea and expose her in a boat during a stor the child, is carried to the seacoast of Sicily

But Shakespeare has reversed the kingdoirl to be exposed If the reversal is to continue, the ship must land on the seacoast of Bohemia, rather than that of Sicily, and so it does Act III, scene iii has its scene set on "Bohemia, the seacoast"

The trouble with this is that while Sicily has a seacoast on every side, Bohemia-the real Bohemia-both in our day and in Shakespeare's is an inland realm and has no seacoast It is, in fact, two hundred miles from the closest seacoast, at Trieste (nowadays part of Italy)

Shakespeare must have known this, of course, but what difference does it make, when Bohemia is not a real land at all, but is the Bohemia of idyll, andelse?

Of course, if ant to be literal, there was a tiht of its power under the reign of Ottokar II ("the Great"), who ruled from 1253 to 1278 In 1269, at a tih a period of weakness, Ottokar conquered what is now Austria and ruled over an enlarged Boheht down to the head of the Adriatic Sea For four years, then (before the Holy Roained these lost lands), and four years only, frohborhood of modern Trieste