What happens in 4.1 is the kind of thing that made Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson, cringe. By having the action shift suddenly to sixteen years later, and to the exotic location of Bohemia, Shakespeare violated the Classical unities of time and place, the doctrine according to which the plot of a drama should unfold within a 48-hour period and in a single geographic locale. The allegorical figure, Time, seems to be aware of and apologetic about this: “Impute it not a crime,” s/he asks, “that I slide / O’er sixteen years” (4.1.4-6).
This is but one instance of the play’s fantastical element—that to which, in my opinion, the criterion of plausibility is inappropriately applied when judging the play’s aesthetic value. First of all, The Winter’s Tale is a romance, and romance literature typically includes strange occurrences, magic and the supernatural, charms, spells, talismans, and the like. Compared to “Exit, pursued by a bear,” the Delphic Oracle, and the fact that Bohemia is given a seacoast (Bohemia is modern-day Czech Republic, a land-locked country), a gap in the plot of sixteen years seems to me a rather minor offence.
Much of scenes 1-3 in Act 4 is devoted to exposition: background information requisite to enjoying 4.4, where the plot truly resumes.
In 4.2, Camillo and Polixenes review what has happened in the past and allude also to present circumstances. Notice what is said of Polixenes’ son, Prince Florizel, at lines 21-29. Of whom does this remind us?
The chief purpose of 4.3 is to introduce the character of Autolycus whose primary contribution to the play is comic entertainment, but whom Shakespeare goes to the trouble of integrating into the plot through Autolycus’ connection with the Shepherd and Clown.
If Prince Florizel, at least as described by Polixenes and Camillo, reminds us of a character from another play, of whom does Autolycus remind us and why? Look especially at 4.3.13-18, 28-29. How would you describe Autolycus’ point of view? What sort of character is he? And what in your opinion is most humorous here about his exchange with the Clown? (Autolycus’ name, btw, means “lone wolf.”)
Though the location is exotic Bohemia, the cultural setting is an English sheep-shearing festival, one of the many seasonal celebrations and feasts that took place regularly in the English countryside during the early modern era. Typical of such celebrations were songs, dances, the reading of ballads, costumes and play-acting, all of which are featured here. It was not uncommon on these occasions for simple folk to engage in mock pageantry wherein they would wear costumes and affect the manners of their social superiors. Here the “lowly” Perdita is Queen of the Feast, the spring goddess Flora.
It is worth pausing here to consider what Shakespeare’s audience would have experienced watching this: a young boy plays the role of a young noblewoman (Leontes’ and Hermione’s daughter, remember) who thinks she is a lowly shepherd’s daughter pretending to be an aristocratic goddess. Prince Florizel, meanwhile, pretends to be the lowly shepherd Doricles in order, presumably, to woo Perdita undetected by her adoptive family and neighbours.
This situation allows for multiple ironies, the most obvious being an effect of the Cinderella element. Everyone notices that Perdita is an unusually graceful child, “a daughter of most rare note,” observes Camillo in the earlier discussion with Polixenes (4.2.36-37). In addition to a kind of folk entertainment, the Cinderella story is of ideological significance. Perdita seems “of most rare note” not because she has somehow acquired noble manners, but because nobility is in her blood. She speaks and behaves the way she does despite being raised by country bumpkins in a lowly shepherd’s cottage. And presumably the royal Prince Florizel is attracted to her because, unbeknownst to him, she is in fact an appropriate social match. So even though both he and she challenge the social hierarchy—he by deliberately seeking to marry beneath his station, she by arguing at one point that “the selfsame sun that shines upon his [i.e., Polixenes’] court / Hides not his visage from our cottage” (4.4.432-33)—the play ultimately reinforces the status quo.
Perdita does this in other ways. She seems “naturally” to know, for example, that it would be inappropriate for her, a mere shepherd’s daughter, to marry a prince (4.4.14-24). Her exchange with the disguised Polixenes about “carnations and streaked gillyvors” (79-102) is a more extended example. The horticultural art of grafting, whereby one plant is combined with another to produce a hybrid, features here as an ironic allegory. Polixenes’ argument, that “art” (human intervention in the natural order) is but a higher form of nature, had become commonplace in Shakespeare’s day, advanced most famously by Sir Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry (1595). Perdita, however, objects to this doctrine, arguing in effect that “great creating nature” (88) should be left alone. Her position in this discussion is an allegorical reflection of the social doctrine of decorum: that persons born in a particular social station behave accordingly. Perdita is uncomfortable at the thought of hybrid plants: they are “nature’s bastards” (83), just as she is uncomfortable with the idea of marrying above her station. The fact that she so naturally adheres to this doctrine is but another symptom of her noble blood—the tendency to understand and subscribe to the “natural” order of things.
So the play might seem on the whole to reinforce the status quo. And yet that Perdita thinks herself a shepherd’s daughter, that Florizel can become a country swain, that Autolycus later in the scene is able to pass himself off as a gentleman ( literally “of the gentry” or “of gentle manners”)—all this, together with the existence of hybrid flowers, suggests the very real possibility of altering the natural order, of changing (in the social sphere) one’s position in the hierarchy. (Indeed, by the end of the play the Shepherd and the Clown are in fact made gentlemen—see 5.2.111ff.). Today, we take this sort of thing for granted as “upward mobility,” “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the “American dream,” etc. But The Winter’s Tale and other plays are powerful evidence that alteration of the social fabric was not taken for granted in Shakespeare’s day.
A second major plot is introduced in Act 4, and it is a typical comedy. Two young lovers, Perdita and Florizel, wish to realize their desires but are prevented by none else than a meddling father figure. Though the elements of this plot have been introduced in previous scenes, it is set in motion when Florizel and Perdita exchange vows beginning at 4.4.346. The disguised Polixenes, angry at his son’s neglect of his father’s authority, becomes a meddling figure when he removes his disguise at line 405, precisely halfway through this very long scene.
Comments about this (lines 346-438)?
As is typical of such comedies, the lovers flee to another location in order to escape the ruling authority (recall “the ancient privilege of Athens” in Dream) and realize their desires. And to where do they flee? Why, Sicilia, of course! The remainder of 4.4 is structured to get everyone back to Sicilia, the place whence Perdita escaped to Bohemia in order to avoid a tragic end. The play’s two locations, Sicilia and Bohemia, each play dual roles. Not only opposites, they are reflections of each other: each a world toward which characters move, and from which they flee. It is as if Athens were to become the fairy world, and the fairy world Athens, with neither ceasing to be itself. What is Shakespeare up to here? What have these reversals and inversions to do with the play’s generic properties, i.e., its comedic and tragic elements?
I can think of no better reason for Shakespeare’s including this character in the play than his value as pure comic entertainment. Comment on his presence in 4.4, pointing to specific moments you find humorous, linguistically exciting, thematically meaningful, or some combination of these.
Tomorrow we’ll attend to Act 5 and the catastrophe, and consider the question of whether the play’s obvious artifice compromises or enhances its handling of themes central to human experience. Why bother with tragicomedy—a form much decried by Jonson and others as an inappropriate hybrid, one of “nature’s bastards”?