The Winter's Tale: Notes (2)

Comical Pastoral

• An abrupt switch in mood -- tragic intensity to pastoral comedy
  • Black comedy? "Exit pursued by a bear" (3.3.57) [video]
  • "Thou met'st with things dying, I with things new born" (3.3.110-1)
• Perdita and Florizel
  • Perdita and Proserpina, the cycle of seasons
  • Florizel and the restraint of passion
  • Polixenes and the disruption of festivities [video]

Unconsidered trifles: Autolycus

• The theatre of the imagination or the physical stage?
• Why the part of Autolycus? He contributes little to the plot.
  • Theme?
  • A part for Robert Armin?
  • A crowd pleaser? [video]
  • All of the above and more?
• Compare Bottom, Puck, Dogberry, Pompey (and Falstaff)
• Celebrating the anarchic

"That which was lost is found"

• Leontes' moment of desire (compare Pericles) (5.1.121) [video]
• The offstage discovery scene (5.2)
• The final wonderful improbability: the winter's tale and redemption from excess
  • Julio (Giulio) Romano
  • Cold marble
  • Paulina as stage manager [video]
  • Reconciliation and warmth [video]
    • Magic, realistic, magic realism, or all three?
  • The marriage of Paulina and Camillo

Questions about the structure of the play

• Is there anything in Leontes that makes possible, bearable, even triumphant, the fact that he is so fully restored to happiness at the end of the play?
• How important is motivation in a character? Do we need to know why Leontes is jealous?
• Why does Antigonus actually carry out his vow to abandon Perdita?

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This page last updated on 1 December 2002. © Michael Best, 2002.