Shakespeare The Winters Tale Essay Example For Students

Shakespeare: The Winters Tale Essay The Winters Tale is a play of extremes of character, mood and genre, the play therefore cannot easily be categorised. As a result, in considering a question such as this we must be conscious of the fact that we are measuring the comic elements relative value against, for example, the tragic or romantic sides of the play. The comedy must therefore be gauged in the context of the piece as a whole. Contextually, comedy was of course very important in contemporary live performance as it is today on stage. It is often easy to forget that a playwright can and will blend genres, a technique that modern critics will often explain away as a method to increase tension. For example, it has been said that the comedy of the drunken porter in Macbeth does not vitiate but rather increases the tragic momentum. 1 These sorts of effect are undoubtedly achieved; this fact does not however diminish the spontaneous comic value of a moment in a live performance. The term tragicomedy has been has been employed to describe The Winters Tale and plays similar in genre-structure to, such as Pericles, Prince of Tyre. These plays tend to have more than just a glimpse of relieving comedy; the humour usually has a significant role in the development of the play and its ideas. Shakespeare conforms to his own, and classical tradition, with his approach to seasonal changes, in fortune, No enemy / But winter and rough weather2, and tone as the plot progresses into the fourth act of The Winters Tale. The court of Sicilia is the setting for the tragic suspicions of Leontes; the subsequent flight of Polixenes and Camillo; the trial of Hermione and the fates of the two children, Mamillius and Perdita. The playwright designates Sicilia to be the land that is set in the audiences mind as wintry, bleak and ill fortuned in the first three acts of the play. The second episode, in the pastoral setting of the Bohemian countryside contradicts the harsh tragedy of Sicilia, by introducing shepherds, clowns, rogues and young lovers. Shakespeares introduction of these stock comic figures, classically optimistic images and his adoption of the pastoral backdrop is as formulaic as a fairy tale, which is indeed the effect the playwright is trying to create. The only real humour in Sicilia is Mamillius playful flirtation with the first and second ladies in the first scene of the second act. His elaborately adult description, I learned it out of womens faces, of what he believes to be eyebrows that become women best is childishly amusing but can be seen as little more than a playful mock, perhaps ingratiating Mamillius with the audience before his tragic death. It could be said that this image of a comic child in an extremely grown-up and humourless environment is meant to look out of place. Perhaps Shakespeares vision of childhood is meant for that of the carefree Bohemian countryside, not that of the central pressure of being heir to the Sicilian throne. His playful admission that A sad tales best for winter shows his regular childish love of fantasy. However this also perhaps suggests the imprint of adult time restrictions on his young mind and his love for spring and humour, trapped inside the bleak, grown-up winter of jealousy and deception is not a just place for the young prince. It could be said that much of the humour in Bohemia derives from a childish sense of comedy that is lacking in Sicilia. Childhood could be seen as the spring of life, where comedy and vivacity prevail over responsibility. Autolycus of course possesses a certain air of a timeless traveller and Peter Pan-esque, ever-young quality that can easily be associated with childhood. The optimism and comedy in fact truly begin with Perditas survival and adoption; this ensures for an audience that the play is not destined for misery but for a new beginning, thou metst with things dying, I with things newborn. The babys discovery by the Old Shepherd is comic given his rural innocence and admiration for the child, A very pretty bairn-a boy, or a child, I wonder? The shepherds soliloquy is completely opposite in nature to those of Leontes in the first three acts of the play. Where Leontes are to convey his true jealousy, the shepherds takes on an almost pantomimic form. The monologue is suggestive, some behind door work, appealing to the sexual humour of the audience and the words are dialectic and endearing, This is fairy gold, boy, and twill prove so. The shepherds overall appeal is his discursive, humorous relationship he quickly forms and maintains with the audience when in soliloquy. Both the clown and the shepherd are emphatically simplistic in their speech and story telling. How does Shakespeare create dramatic impact in Act 1 Scene 5 EssayHowever, many other things get better than was previously thought possible superseding expectation, Hermiones reanimation, Perditas return and the kings forgiveness. The two main people involved in the maintenance of these circles are Autolycus and Paulina who both conform to the unavoidable cycle that is Apollos oracle. The oracles unrealistic and almost comically blunt message, Leontes is a jealous tyrant, stays true in its prophecies throughout the play. Autolycus can be seen as a funnier but less persistent Paulina, O Hermione, / As every time doth boast itself. His oblivious introduction to the management of preordained fates, to which he is an involuntary aid, is very godlike in the true Greek sense of the word: lethargic, selfish and inherently humorous. His dishonesty is laughable just as a personified ancient gods might be, but his role in the bringing together of the final reunion is irreplaceable. I believe Shakespeare is making some sort of ironic social comment about the value of nobility in his treatment of the predominantly lower-class comedy. Perditas unquestionable grace is developed and honed as a shepherds daughter but her blood is noble. Autolycus has also served Prince Florizel but his humour and roguish charm come from his experience of the real world. On top of these good rural qualities, comedy and light-heartedness illuminate an optimistic charm that Shakespeare implies cannot exist in the tight, noble atmosphere of Sicilia. Despite portraying Bohemia as a land of clowns and buffoons, the playwright praises their freedom of expression in music, dance and art without the stilted contrivance of Sicilia. Shakespeare also values the comedy as a release of the tension of the first three acts but also as an adverse perspective on how everyone else lives. To contrast the tragic format of previous, predominantly serious plays of focusing on a short period of time, the playwright expands the time period the piece occupies and concentrates on the lives of other characters in other locations. In doing this he removes some of the weight from the tragic episode. This technique of using humour and tragedy, a so-called tragicomedy, therefore gives an audience more scope, more themes and genres to concentrate on. The employment of the comedy provides not only humour in itself but a positive realisation that life is not focused around negativity but spread over many moods and feelings, where laughter and optimism can prevail, as The Winters Tale has been said to have achieved. The impression on an audience after watching a production of the play is of course not one purely of the dangers of unwarranted jealousy in a position of power, but is amongst other things, a tale of redemption, reconciliation, vagabondage and good humour. The sharp edge of the inexplicable rage is blunted by the comedy, but is not devalued by it. The comic moments are to introduce the things that really matter to Shakespeare in his last plays, reunion and re-growth. Shakespeares final moment in the play requires that we do awake our faith. In order for this sort of faith to be realised, a radical, unrealistic sense of humour must have been established in, and have remained on our minds by through the events of the fourth act. The penultimate acts gradual introduction to unconventional ideas allows us to laugh at them in comedy to prepare for Hermiones awakening, which, without the fourth acts careful preparation with humour, might seem funny when it is clearly not supposed to be. Comedy aids the play in its plot on a character level, on our understanding of the plays message and how the ending can plausibly come about. We must remember that Shakespeare is also catering for a live audience in his use of the humour but is also exploring the fabric of reconciliation and forgiveness. In my opinion, the major artifice or leap of faith cannot be taken seriously without the audience adopting what one could call a sense of humour, that is to say an open mind and an ability to mentally break convention. In order to have this ability to leave behind the pretence of the final scene of the play, an audiences mind has to have been nurtured by the comic elements in the fourth act. This nurturing leads to an admission on the audiences part that this play is a work of art and must be accepted and appreciated as just that.