Behind the Arras

The language of The Winter’s Tale has a reputation for difficulty, and a fascinating element of the rehearsal process has been the attempt to make sense of the mature Shakespeare’s astonishingly free use of the complete resources of English grammar and wording.

On deeper experience, however, the problem is concentrated in a few scenes and a few characters. The speeches of the heroine, Hermione, the innocent victim of her royal husband’s insane and apparently baseless jealousy, turn out in performance to be remarkably clear and straightforward. So do those of her ally Paulina. The love-talk of the young people, Perdita and Florizel, is more idealistic (and grammatical!) than that of the average Hollywood teen, but still comprehensible and charming. The language of the two comic shepherds, father and son, remains very largely accessible.

Their comical assailant (and later savior), the thief and con-man Autolycus, poses greater problems. Although the other characters have their roots in Shakepeare’s source, Robert Green’s pastoral romance, Pandosto (1588), Autolycus is entirely Shakespeare’s invention, almost certainly in order to give his musical clown, Robert Armin (for whom the part of Lear’s Fool was also written) a role commensurate with his gifts. Since Autolycus is only peripherally involved in the plot, much of what he says is directed at the audience, not the other characters, and since a lot of it involves satirical comment on early 17th-century practices no longer current in our society, it is hard to come at on its own. Since the ASP’s John Kuntz (like Armin, a fine musician) is a great physical performer, however, he has come up with one ingenious turn after another that effectively translate the obscure Jacobean references into visual antics we can all find laughable.

The toughest case is that of the jealous king, Leontes. For this character, whose psyche is literally shredded by the dark passion that surges up almost out of nowhere and ends by seeming to destroy almost everything he cherishes, Shakepeare invented an appropriate language, which turns on itself, then turns again, as it follows a mind coursing through a maze of contradictory and terrifying thoughts. Here is a representative speech, in which Leontes inquires whether Camillo, his trusted counselor, has also perceived the queen’s adultery:

Ha’ you not seen, Camillo—
But that’s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn—or heard—
For, to a vision so apparent, rumor
Cannot be mute—or thought, for cogitation
Resides not in that man that does not think—
My wife is slippery.

Six full lines intevene between the verb, “seen, “and the short noun clause that is its direct object, “my wife is slippery.” In between , the thought dodges to and fro: “or . . . or . . . or.” Leontes’ own assurance is expressed in reverse,“past doubt,” his fear in an image, “the cuckold’s horn” applied not to a person but a cornea. Positive ideas are expressed in single and then double negatives: “cannot be mute,” “Resides not in that man that does not think.” Seeing—“vision”—is confused with hearing—“rumor”—and the very private business of thinking calls up a public and social verb, “resides.” Heavy midline pauses choke the flow of the verse, and only the fifth line is a normal iambic pentameter. The writing is mad, as contorted and tangled as the fantasies from which Leontes cannot escape.

This production’s Leontes, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, has found this language a challenge. Much of his previous experience has been in contemporary plays about contemporary American life, where the language on the stage is pretty much that of the language in the lobby. When the demands of Shakespearean blank verse are piled on top of such contorted syntax and such muddled imagery, the task is doubly daunting. Still, Ricardo, and the rest of the company as they struggled along with him, have grown to understand how powerfully this writing presents one of Shakespeare’s most complex and fascinating characters, whose agonized dilemma is only a radical version of the kinds of personal and social confusion we all pass through a dozen times a day. We’ve all come to believe that the personal authenticity at the heart of his performance, and those of his fellows, will allow audiences to open themselves up to the witchery of the writing, and so come to a correspondingly rich new understanding of themselves.

David Evett
Scholar in Residence