The Winter's Tale: Shakespeare's wondrous tragicomedy

Aims

This course aims to:

• equip you to read a remarkable but under-performed Shakespearean play with greater understanding and appreciation
• enable you to appreciate the play’s dramatic strengths, and to take stock of the puzzling features traditionally regarded as its weaknesses
• shed light on how the play compellingly dramatizes the fraught relationships between perception and reality, kings and subjects, men and women, parents and children; and on the other hand, how it explores the potentially renewing powers of time, storytelling, repentance, faith, and wonder

Course content

The Winter’s Tale, written towards the very end of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, conspicuously explores the then-fashionable idea of ‘tragicomedy’. The play’s first half is overwhelmingly tragic in its trajectory, with everything hurtling uncontrollably towards death and destruction. But then suddenly – even jarringly – the story alters course to give us a strong new movement in its second half leading towards renewal, forgiveness, and the kind of happy ending associated with Shakespearean comedy. We will explore the play closely, act by act, over the course of the week.

As the play opens, a seemingly harmonious world is tipped off its axis, as one man’s imagination opens an alarming gulf between perception and reality, making all that is innocent and good suddenly look to him like proof of guilt and corruption. Worse, the man in question is a king, whose judgements it is highly dangerous even to question. Hence Leontes’ world is sucked inexorably into a void of his own making, while those around him try in vain to stop the headlong descent into general calamity. In the first three days of our course, we will consider closely how this part of the play achieves its compelling dramatic interest and momentum, as well as exploring together some of its psychological, political, and social insights.

However, we will also have to reckon with the fact that, no sooner has the play’s compelling opening half run its course, than we cross a kind of jagged fault line in the action, abruptly leaping over sixteen years and passing from a generic milieu of court tragedy into one of pastoral comedy. We will follow with great curiosity where the play leads, as Act Four boldly asks us to shift our attention to new characters and story lines, and compels us to come to grips with new ways of seeing the world.

It is the business of Act Five to bring the play’s two contrasting worlds together and in so doing, to persuade us that time and a new generation can heal even the most intractable old wounds. Yet meanwhile the play pointedly asks us, can such a story really give us profound insights into life, or is it just an entertaining but wildly unlikely tale, a consummate artist’s elaborate conjuring trick? It will be up to us to decide.

What to expect on this course

The course will be taught as an interactive seminar, using a flexible mix of class discussion, lecture-style presentation, and tutor-led collaborative reading of key scenes and passages from The Winter’s Tale.

The course will involve extensive close reading of the set text, so you must bring a copy of The Winter’s Tale with you to every class (including the first), and you should also become as familiar as possible with the play in advance.

Course sessions

1. The Winter’s Tale, Act One
2. The Winter’s Tale, Act Two
3. The Winter’s Tale, Act Three
4. The Winter’s Tale, Act Four
5. The Winter’s Tale, Act Five

Learning outcomes

As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:

• assess The Winter’s Tale as a fascinating experiment in dramatic form, and place it in relation to its sources and to other plays from Shakespeare’s final period
• appreciate the richness and intensity with which the play dramatizes the fraught relationships between kings and subjects, men and women, parents and children
• identify and explore some of the play’s main themes, including: the uncertain relationship between perception and reality; the importance of time in human life; the experience of guilt and the possibility of redemption; the relationship of art to nature; the significance of storytelling; the nature and value of faith and wonder.

Required reading

* Shakespeare, William, Edited by Snyder, Susan and Curren-Aquino, Deborah, T, The Winter’s Tale (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

You should read the play in full before the course begins, and bring a copy to each class, including the first. The use of a different scholarly edition is acceptable but be aware that there will be variations in text and line numbering, which could at times make it more difficult for you to follow class discussions.