Camillo, the faithful advisor, is a man of conscience. He has a powerful sense of duty; his training and talents are geared towards aiding a king to rule effectively, but he does not allow his loyalty to override his sense of right and wrong. The conflict between duty and conscience is an important theme in The Winter's Tale, and Camillo's resolves to serve his sense of right and wrong before any king. Camillo's decision ultimately makes the play's happy ending possible. His choice is the first in a series of events that protects The Winter's Tale from the momentum towards tragedy set up by Leontes' jealousy.
Act 2 opens with the idyllic scene of the prince playing with his mother and the ladies-in-waiting. The charm and happiness of the moment makes the contrast with the jealousy of Leontes all the more jarring. Shakespeare is giving us a glimpse of the normal pattern of their family life, which invites greater sympathy for the queen and prince and gives us a sense of what Leontes is destroying.
Leontes' delusions isolate him from his family and his court. He removes his wife and son from his company, and he continues to believe fervently in Hermione's infidelity even though everyone at court thinks the idea is ludicrous. He is completely alone in his suspicions, insisting on them most violently when someone at court tries to contradict him. These scenes reveal a king who is withdrawing further and further into his own paranoid fantasies. He interprets Camillo's flight with Polixenes as conclusive proof of his suspicions, ignoring the fact that if Camillo, Hermione, and Polixenes were innocent Camillo would do exactly the same thing. The theme of tyranny is present throughout Act 2, as Leontes' throne protects him from the need for rationality, compassion, and listening to counsel.
Paulina is one of Shakespeare's most fearless heroines, defiantly scolding the king and defending her queen. Scene Two shows us that she commands a great deal of respect in Sicilia: Emilia is relieved when she learns that Paulina will plea for Hermione to Leontes, and the jailer defers to Paulina's authority and believes her when she promises to protect him. Directors have a great deal of influence over how Act 2, Scene Three is played. In some productions, Leontes does not take Paulina seriously, and bears her mostly by ignoring her. She is able to get away with scolding him because he does not view her as an equal; this interpretation is consistent with the manner in which he tries to silence her. Notice that Leontes addresses Antigonus, Paulina's husband, rather than her. He criticizes Antigonus for being unable to control his wife, and the scene can be played to make Paulina almost comic. On the other hand, the scene can be played to make Paulina incredibly threatening. Played this way, Leontes addresses her husband because he has no idea how to deal with a strong woman. Both the comic and threatening interpretations of Paulina's character are grounded in her gender. The fact that she is a woman can mean either that she is taken less seriously by the lords or that the men are disabled by her strength.
From the characters' discussion of the oracle, we know that we are meant to assume that the oracle will speak the truth. Interestingly enough, this viewpoint was totally against the religious teachings of Shakespeare's England. Many theological writings of the time had determined that there was no divine inspiration for the oracles of the ancients, but Shakespeare asks us to take the oracle's word as truth. Throughout The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of the fantastic, in part by creating a world in which the mythology of the ancient Greeks is accepted without rational skepticism or Christian prejudice. Significantly, the idea of a dependable oracle also grounds Truth in the play, giving characters a reliable source of judgments and a sure knowledge of divine will. The fantastic qualities of the play and the accessibility of the truth help to disarm the tragedy that Leontes' jealousy might provoke in another Shakespearean drama.
We see in the exchange between Cleomenes and Dion that the people of Sicilia have a great deal of respect and love for Queen Hermione. When put on trial, she is an exemplar of a specific kind of strength. Although the setting is pagan, her forbearance and resolve follow Christian models of virtue, particularly passive and feminine virtue. She wishes that her father, the emperor of Russia, might see her, but to provide comfort rather than a means to revenge. Her suffering is almost completely passive; she trusts to the gods to provide testimony on her behalf, and chooses to nobly endure suffering rather than try to escape or more actively oppose the king. At the end of the play, when she is miraculously restored, she takes him back without question. One of The Winter's Tale's important themes is the drive to preserve and restore order, with that order being embodied in patriarchy, the king, and the royal family. Ironically, women like Hermione and Paulina are often the key preservers of this patriarchal order. Hermione's virtue comes in part through her sense of her place; although she criticizes Leontes' treatment of her, she is ultimately obedient to her husband. When on trial, she points out that the love she showed Polixenes was consistent with what Leontes himself commanded, and this obedience to her husband's will is part of why people praise her.
Although Leontes behaves like a tyrant, no character tries to remove the king from his throne. The action of the play is to repair the damage caused by Leontes' jealousy, but note what characters are not willing to do: Camillo flees, Hermione endures, and Paulina, though she criticizes the king, will eventually restore his wife to him. Unlike tragedy, where a man of high position falls because of excesses or flaws in his character, here that momentum is totally disarmed. A happy ending is possible because so many characters, though critical of Leontes' tyranny, are ultimately loyal to him and work tirelessly to restore to him what he himself has destroyed. When obedience to Leontes becomes impossible because of the dictates of conscience, loyalty to his office and position remains. Paulina confronts him fearlessly, but even she tells the lord who bars her way that she comes to bring Leontes comfort and sleep. And once she sees that Leontes is remorseful, she forgives him even though he has caused the death of Hermione and Mamillius, and eventually causes the death of Paulina's husband. Camillo, who of all the king's beloved most directly disobeys him, must immediately replace his old master with a new one. Camillo is incomplete without a monarch to serve. And even Camillo, in the end, will long to return to Sicilia and the king that he could not obey with a clear conscience.
The king's recognition of his error and his subsequent remorse come about as suddenly as did his jealousy. Though we are meant to take the word of the oracle as truth, Leontes initially does not. The much-awaited word of the oracle is quickly brushed aside, and it is the death of his son moments later that suddenly convinces Leontes that he has been wrong. The king believes that he is being punished by Apollo. But why should he interpret the boy's death this way, when moments earlier he was convinced that he was not Mamillius' true father? It is possible to argue that Mamillius' death convinces him of the oracle's accuracy because it fulfills the prediction that Leontes would go without an heir until the retrieval of his daughter. And yet that explanation seems unconvincing, because Leontes' remorse comes so quickly after he hears the news of Mamillius' death; there seems to be no time to realize that the oracle's prophecy is being fulfilled. Leontes himself certainly never explains his reversal this way. He comes around because he interprets the boy's death as retribution from the gods, even though other explanations seem more plausible.
Shakespeare's portrayal of Leontes' remorse is not about a triumph of reason. Instead, the king's reversal is a canny and penetrating depiction of the power of guilt, which, in this case, is strong enough to break down Leontes' delusions. Although until now he has persevered in his fantasies with the single-mindedness of a madman, there are signs earlier in the play that some part of him recognizes the truth. In Act 2, Scene Three, he hears the news about Mamillius' illness with some degree of concern, and he instructs the servant to make sure that the child is given proper care. Is this compassion normal for Leontes? In that same scene, he orders his infant daughter to death by exposure to the elements and thinks happily of setting fire to his wife: clearly, he is not feeling any strong need to treat anyone with compassion or mercy. Yet some concern remains for his boy. In Act 3, his sudden remorse betrays some knowledge Leontes must have of his wife's faithfulness. He can only interpret Mamillius' death as punishment if he believes that the child is his. Mamillius' sudden death from sickness, caused by the boy's anxiety, which in turn was caused by the king's treatment of Hermione, finally sticks to Leontes' conscience. Sorrow and then guilt set in, accomplishing what the words of the oracle could not. Leontes has deliberately persevered in his delusions, isolating himself from love of his wife and son, from compassion, and from his court. Guilt returns him to them.
A close look at Antigonus and Camillo illuminates the important theme of conflict between loyalty and conscience. Shakespeare sets up strong parallels between Camillo and Antigonus, making each man an alternate version of the other (Hu 1). The difference is that Camillo follows his conscience. Although he has told his king that he will commit murder, instead he chooses to help the intended victim to escape. Antigonus, on the other hand, sticks to his oath and leaves an infant to what seems to be a certain death. The gods do not validate his choice: although the ghost of Hermione seems to recognize that Antigonus acts under extreme pressure (remember that he obeys the king to protect his own life and the life of his wife, Paulina), the gods still punish him for his role in Perdita's abandonment. Self-deception has been necessary for him to be able to do what he knows is wrong: although he previously defended Hermione's virtue, in Scene Three he seems to have accepted that Perdita is a bastard. To ease his conscience, he has convinced himself that Leontes' absurd suspicions are the truth. Shakespeare calls attention to Antigonus' failure through the character's name. It is a male form of "Antigone," the great heroine of Sophocles' drama who defies the king and dies for her beliefs (Hu 5). Although Sophocles' play was not performed for the English audiences of Shakespeare's time, the story was known, and Antigonus' ignoble and comic death becomes all the more embarrassing in light of Antigone's glorious martyrdom.
His comic death at the hands of an angry bear is a rich moment. Many critics have pointed to his death as the play's moment of transformation from tragedy to comedy and romance. The Shepherd calls attention to Scene Three as a time of contrasts and cycles. His son finds death, but the Shepherd finds life; the rest of the play will move towards repairing the damage that Leontes has caused. Bears hibernate during the winter and then emerge during spring, acting out the death and rebirth alluded to by the shepherd. The fact that Perdita is found by shepherds also has obvious Christian connotations. Like the good shepherd of Christ's parables, the Shepherd is looking for his lost sheep. He finds the infant instead, and immediately the old man feels compassion for the child. Shakespeare synthesizes Christian and pagan worldviews to create a new myth of death and rebirth in The Winter's Tale, and miraculous death and rebirth is one of the play's most important themes. The next act is set in the countryside during a time of feasting, and the pastoral setting is a welcome change from the oppressive atmosphere of the tyrant-ruled Sicilian court.
The shift in tone and focus between Act 2 and Act 3 is one of the most dramatic transitions in Shakespeare. Suddenly, the tragic momentum set up by Leontes' irrational jealousy and tyrannical behavior is left behind; at the request of the chorus, Father Time, we leave the world of Sicilia and enter the pastoral world of Bohemia's countryside. The focus here is the love story of Perdita and Florizell, set in an idyllic landscape of shepherds, rogues, and peasants dressed as forest satyrs. The court of Bohemia never enters our consideration; when we do see courtiers and royalty, they are foundlings unaware of their true identity or they are in disguise. Nature and its regenerative powers dominate the stage. When we first see Florizell and Perdita, he compares her to a goddess of nature, and later, men dressed as mythical satyrs dance for our entertainment. Shakespeare is creating a charming rural world full of allusions to the nature deities of ancient Greece.
Depictions of the pastoral have a long tradition in English literature. A pastoral is an idealized literary portrait of life in the country, often involving shepherds and shepherdesses who are surprisingly literate and given to speaking in verse. To many of the Londoners who saw Shakespeare's plays, the pastoral was a form of escapism to a life that was removed from the hubbub of the city. Literate aristocrats, fond throughout the ages of romanticizing poverty that they do not share, enjoyed the fantasy images of sheep tending, quaint festivals, and poetry-spouting peasants. These pastorals depicted a world that was supposedly more simple and beautiful than the lives of the urban or the rich.
Here, the pastoral setting contributes to the important theme of death and rebirth. Leontes has caused the deaths of his wife and son and the apparent death of his daughter. Yet Perdita has miraculously survived, and her restoration to her father will seem, to the grieving court of Sicilia, like a miraculous resurrection. The idealized world of Bohemia's countryside is the site of nature's cycles, which parallel the loss and death of the first three acts followed by the renewal and restoration in Acts Four and Five.
The dangers of tyranny are present in Act 4, but this time Polixenes is the man at fault. His anger with his son is understandable, but it is also excessive. When he threatens Perdita with physical violence, it is the act of a man whose throne will protect him even if he terrorizes his subjects. Tyranny separates a king from his people; remember Leontes' delusions and his tyrannical behavior, which isolated him farther and farther from his court and family. The Winter's Tale warns against this kind of isolation: good kingship means guarding against it. Perdita's intended words of advice to the king are to the point: "I was not much afeard, for once or twice / I was about to speak and tell him plainly / The selfsame sun that shines upon his court / Hides not his visage from our cottage but / Looks on all alike" (4.4.520-4). Monarchs should be responsible, like everyone else, for the proper treatment of friends and family; kings are linked even to their poorest subjects by a common humanity. Throughout Shakespeare's plays, a king forgets these truths at his peril.
Yet in this play, Shakespeare goes easy on Leontes and Polixenes. They are allowed, despite their misuses of their power, to have a happy ending. Fate is generous and forgiving. Polixenes never even has to apologize for his rough treatment of Perdita and her adoptive family, nor does he have to learn the lesson that Perdita was about to share with him. His problem with his son's marriage takes care of itself when Perdita's true parentage is revealed. Although both kings at different points misuse their power, the play does not leave them isolated. Leontes and Polixenes learn their lessons or half-learn them; either way, fate accommodates them and restores their relationships with friends and family.
We return in the final act to the grieving court of Sicilia, still sorrowful for the queen's death and anxious about the stability of their kingdom, which remains without an heir. Act 5 restores stability and solves the problems of both kings without any revolution. The queen and daughter Leontes lost return to him miraculously. For Polixenes, the commoner his son wanted to marry has turned out to be a princess, and no less, she is the daughter of his oldest friend.
The happy ending is fantastic, so full of magic and unlikely coincidences that characters constantly remark that if the events they have witnessed were retold as a story, no one would believe it. A "winter's tale" is a long story to be told by a warm fire, often one full of fantasy and clever invention. But the audience is not being told a story: we are allowed, along with the characters, to witness the wondrous events of the play. The most fantastic event of the show, Hermione's miraculous resurrection, is also one of the most powerful. Shakespeare's audience might have had some anxiety about the magical resurrection of the dead, but Leontes remarks that the effects of Paulina's magic are so wondrous that her craft must be embraced as natural and good. The pagan and pastoral elements of the play also help to deflect the charge of witchcraft.
Act 4 immersed the audience in a healing and restorative world of nature and romance. The Greek and Christian stories of regeneration and resurrection have prepared us for this ending, as has the pagan myth of Pygmalion, in which a sculptor's creation comes to life through the aid of the gods. Lines in Act 5 foreshadow the resurrection. When Paulina tells the king that he will never marry until his wife draws breath again, the talk of Hermione's resurrection is a prediction rather than a rhetorical device. And when the gentlemen discuss the revealing of Perdita's parentage, one of them remarks that even those "most marble there changed color" (5.2.96-7). The phrase means that even the most hard-hearted were moved, but the gentleman is also unwittingly foreshadowing the restoration of the one who is literally "most marble," the statue of Hermione. She changes color when the blush of life enters her cheeks again.
In moving towards the happy ending, more than magic is required. Paulina and Hermione join the ranks of other Shakespearean women who work to preserve or restore the status quo. The two women represent vastly different kinds of feminine virtue. Hermione is the passive, obedient wife, who without question takes back the husband who caused the death of herself and her son. Paulina is the sharp-tongued, fearless, and shrewish woman who never shirks from scolding any wrongdoer, even if he happens to be the king. But Paulina, too, is ultimately loyal to Leontes and his throne. Her magic restores his wife to him, and she obeys him when he asks her to marry Camillo. Paulina is strong-willed and admirable, and her counsel is especially needed after the departure of the wise and competent Camillo, but she is no revolutionary. All of the characters of the play remain deeply loyal to the two kings. Camillo obeys his conscience, but once Leontes repents, Camillo longs to see his old master again. Shakespeare presents us with admirable heroes who speak their minds, like Paulina, or obey their consciences, like Camillo; and yet these heroes must work within the system of patriarchy and monarchy. Both heroes are distinguished by their loyalty. Kings err, but for the happy ending to be possible they must be forgiven. The play's joyous ending makes a strong statement about social bonds and monarchy; its vision of what it means to be a good king and a good subject (and also, a good husband, wife, daughter, son, father, and friend) is both optimistic and conservative. The family of Leontes provides a model for a wide array of other social structures and hierarchies, including the families of subjects and the larger family of the nation. Preservation or restoration of these structures, including restoring and protecting patriarchs who abuse their power, is the central struggle of this play.
The prophecy of the oracle gives us a sense that the hand of providence is at work. In delivering a message about truth and God, Apollo's prediction functions as Teiresias the seer functions in the plays of Sophocles: yes, there is a divine plan, and yes, sometimes parts of it are accessible to man. There is truth, something to aspire to, and there is meaning and order. Finally, the prophecy of Apollo has been fulfilled, and Perdita has returned home to be reunified with her father and mother. The play ends with restored order and great happiness. For modern audiences who have grown up under democracy and who also might view the idea of providence with great skepticism, The Winter's Tale can be a strange and even unsettling play. But its faith in existing social structures and the benign hand of the divine also make this play one of Shakespeare's most hopeful and uplifting works. In the reunification of Leontes' family and the new marriage of Perdita, The Winter's Tale leaves us with an optimistic vision of order and renewal.