Knowledge and Belief in The Winter's Tale

Lim, Walter S. H.

doi:10.1353/sel.2001.0019

Cited by 7 publications

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References 12 publications

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“…In his discussion of this scene, Walter Lim contends that The Winter's Tale 'has an inordinate preoccupation with the subjects of truth and knowledge' so that 'the point impressed in this [second] scene', he argues, 'is that there is always some gap in the individual apprehension of an actual event'. 24 In other words, the full truth can only emerge through the communal dialogue performed in this scene, in contrast to Leontes' jealous isolation in the first half of the play and his refusal to recognize the truth because of his refusal to hear any voice except his own. Immediately after recounting the thanksgiving for the royal friends and family who find one another, the Third Gentleman then tells of the perils and dangers of Antigonus being devoured by the bear and of the sailors being drowned in the storm as a consequence of delivering the infant Perdita to the land of Bohemia.…”

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‘which ’longs to women of all fashion’: Churching and Shakespeare's <em>The Winter Tale</em>

Johnson

2004

Early Theatre

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In a 1583 speech to Parliament, Queen Elizabeth pronounces, 'One matter touches me so near as I may not overskip; religion is the ground on which all other matters ought to take root, and being corrupted may mar all the tree'. 1 Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale dramatizes the implications of Elizabeth's statement, in that the play performs the movement, as so much of the scholarship describes, from losing to finding, from law to grace, and from transgression to redemption. A syncretic jumble of classical myth, Christian scripture, pagan solstice ritual, church holy day celebration, Apollonian oracle, and Pauline theology, The Winter's Tale provides a richly textured portrayal of the tensions implicit in matters of religious faith and practice.To be sure, the political significance of The Winter's Tale is wideranging; as Leonard Tennenhouse contends, the Jacobean theatre (and this play in particular) 'was never more political than when it staged a king as a father and a court as a household', and in such plays, 'the stage was a place for disseminating an iconography of state'. 2 Neveretheless, to recall Elizabeth's metaphor, while the tree (in this case the family tree) is marred in The Winter's Tale because of the destructively jealous rage of the political 'parens patriae' -that is, Leontes, King of Sicilia -the soil in which the tree is rooted and from which it is nourished is religion.In Act 3, scene 2 of The Winter's Tale, Leontes brings his wife Hermione to trial, formally charging her with conducting an adulterous relationship with his long-time friend and confidant, Polixenes, King of Bohemia. During her defense, Hermione rightly complains that she has had 'the child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs / To women of all fashion' (3.2.103-4). 3 In this trial scene Shakespeare draws the audience's attention to the fact that Leontes, in his hasty condemnation of his wife, not only denies Hermione her month of privilege after giving birth and exposes her to the public humiliation of not being afforded a proper churching ceremony, but also deliberately disregards the divine oracle. Shakespeare's contemporaries would

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confidence: 94%