A Long Winter's Tale

I'll be posting a list of potential venues today, but I wanted to put up more of the draft I've been working on and see what you think!

Thesis: When asked what genre is most true to life, most people would answer tragedies. We have a tendency as a society to believe that the worst is going to happen, and hoping anything positive will is wishful thinking. Romances, however, are a mix of tragedy and comedy, and while Shakespeare's romance The Winter's Tale has been criticized since its beginning as being unrealistic, Leontes' experience with the oracle within the play becomes a metaphor for the audience's rejection of The Winter's Tale, seemingly based on a desire to be realistic, but in reality predicated on an inability to see recognize the romantic elements of life.

You can read the first two paragraphs here.

Next moves in my argument:

 1.      The Oracle as a Metaphor for Romance

2.1.1 Supernatural Elements of the Oracle

            Because of both the nature of the oracle and how his words are received, the oracle serves as a metaphor for the genre of romance, specifically its supernatural elements and mixture of genres.  This assumed supernatural interference in people’s lives is evident as Leontes expects to hear the truth from the oracle because he or she is “the mouthpiece of the gods.”  In ancient Greece or Rome, an oracle was a priest or priestess “through which the gods were supposed to speak or prophesy” (OED).  Leontes is reassured that his comrades who have gone to the temple of Apollo will “bring all” “from the oracle” (Act 2, scene 1, l.185-6).  The synecdoche apparent in Leontes’ words—“all” to mean truth—reveals his trust in this supernatural power.  The oracle is capable of finding out “all” from the gods, meaning the gods are an integral part of these Sicilians’ lives, just as supernatural elements are an integral part of romances.  Romance has “the character or quality that makes something appeal strongly to the imagination . . . an air, feeling, or sense of wonder [or] mystery” (OED).  This sense of wonder comes from an other-worldliness, a connection with the world of the gods.  As Dr. Young, professor of English at Brigham Young University, explains, “Both the coincidences and the supernatural are expressions of an overarching power—the gods, the powers—that acts through time, through nature, to accomplish ends that humans don’t entirely understand.”  The gods are intimately involved in the lives of the characters who depend on the oracles to learn the truths the gods already know.

            2.1.2 Not Picky about Genres

Romances, or “tragicomedies,” combine the literary genres of tragedy and comedy.  Shakespeare’s romances involve separation and wandering, characteristic of tragedies, but end in reunion and reconciliation, like the ending of a comedy (Wells, A Dictionary of Shakespeare).  Leontes’ main flaw, his jealousy, is reflective of the main flaw of the heroes in tragedies.  King Polixenes personifies Leontes’ weakness: “This jealousy / Is for a precious creature; as she’s rare / Must it be great; and, as his person’s mighty, / Must it be violent” (Act 1, scene 2, l.452-5).  Suddenly, Leontes’ jealousy is a destructive animal which Polixenes correctly foretells will lead to great violence.  A tragic hero would respond without restraint to a situation that seems to be black and white (http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/comedytr.htm). 

The play’s shift from tragedy to comedy is abrupt and clearly identifiable.  The shepherd repeats at the play’s shift from tragedy to comedy, “Heavy matters, heavy matters!” (Shakespeare, Act 3, scene 3, l.111).  In a repeated phrase, he has summed up the tragedy of the last three acts.  This shift is complete as he exclaims—in preparation for his own good fortune, and for Leontes’ eventual happiness—“‘Tis a lucky day . . . and we’ll do good deeds on ‘t” (Shakespeare, l.137-8, III, iii).  Shakespeare’s decision to end Leontes’ unhappy years with happiness and marriage is characteristic of comedy, as Dr. Burton points out.  “Tragicomedy” suits this mishmash of tragedy and comedy, not decidedly one or the other.                        

1.2  Mutually Ignored: Oracles and Romances

                It is because of these supernatural elements and this mishmash of genres that, like the oracle’s words, The Winter’s Tale has been met with contempt by critics.  This contemptuous attitude is reflected in Paulina’s words about her friend’s, Hermione’s, statue coming alive: “That she is living, / Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale; but it appears she lives” (Shakespeare, l.115-117, V, iii).  Paulina’s choice of the word “hooted” accurately describe others’ reactions to the supposed miracle of Hermione’s reawakening.  It also reflects the common attitude towards the plot of The Winter’s Tale.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines “hooting” as “call[ing] or shout[ing scornfully or abusively] at or after anyone,” which is what critics did during and after Shakespeare’s day.  In the 1600s, Ben Jonson expressed his dissatisfaction with Shakespeare’s apparently loose touch with reality.  Jonson considered Shakespeare’s seeming disregard for accurate “geography, [his] only partly explained sixteen-year concealment of Hermione, or [his] depiction of Leontes’ unprovoked jealousy” as the result of laziness and manipulation, not artistic judgment (Wells).  Just as Leontes ignored the oracle’s words, critics ignored Shakespeare’s play because they expected truth, not crudely conceived entertainment, from a successful playwright.     

2.      The Real Reasons for Resistance to Romance

3.1 Dismissing the Happy Ending

            The Winter’s Tale faces unavoidable resistance to being taken seriously because its romantic elements make it seem not only mish-mashed, but unreal.  The play has been dismissed as “grounded on impossibilities,” just as Leontes dismisses the oracle’s words as having nothing of truth in them (Dryden).  But these impossibilities are more than Shakespeare’s faulty knowledge of geography; among these “impossibilities” is the idea that tragedy can end in happiness.  Such negative reactions to the play reveal that, as Dr. Young explains, “[T]he play uncovers and responds to our deep suspicion of happy endings . . .  Both [Leontes’ jealousy] and [our suspicions] are expressions of what might be called ‘fear fulfillment.’”  Leontes cannot believe that what would make him happiest is true, that his wife really is faithful to him.  In speaking of his own feelings of jealousy, he muses that “[a]ffection . . . dost make possible things not so held . . . dost . . . infect . . . my brains” (Act 1, scene 2, l. 138-146).  Leontes’ recognition of his own lack of reason does not stop him from believing his unreasonable suspicions.  After her experience of reading The Winter’s Tale in class, a student of Dr. Young’s wrote: “I like happy endings even though our class seemed to think that happy endings are unrealistic. . . . I guess that many times the ‘Happy Ending’ we’re looking for doesn’t always come.”