Life

Petrarch, I very much appreciate your fine essay. I have read about half but my eyes bother me reading online so decided to print it out. I also kept a copy in my offline file. This is very well written and I like the way you have outlined it into sections/topics. I for one, having been exposed now to the production on DVD and the CD set several times along with reading it, do continue to wonder and am curious about Leonete's strange and irratic behavior and personality. I can't say I do this as much as I do concerning the character of Hamlet, but somehow Leonetes still fascinates me.
I listened to "Pericles" and I would agree that this play seems to have the same feel or quality about it, part tragedy and part comedy. In fact, I kept getting their plots mixed up, when we were merely voting on which play to discuss next last month.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know I really appreciate this well thought out essay and hope that you write more about the additional acts in the play. I will definitely read them. I long to learn more about this play and the character analysis.

Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

This Humanist, whom no belief constrained,
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
-J.V. Cunningham

We make excuses for the flaws we find in our friends, or the people we like. Some people just don't like to admit that Shakespeare has flaws, most notably in plot structure. In their descriptions, he becomes a being of pure virtue, embodying every strength like Spenser's Arthur, or so I hear. But Shakespeare wasn't interested in plot. It wasn't his strength, which is why he didn't write any original compositions of his own. We don't have to explain away his mediocre writing toward the end of his life. I really disliked Cymbeline and A Winter's Tale. I also noticed the somewhat poor structure of Pericles when I read it. Can't it be enough that the man wrote eight of the best plays ever written? Can't we leave it at that and not try to find a masterpiece in every thing he wrote?

Shakespeare was tangential and he would include whole scenes that added nothing to his stories just because he considered them entertaining. He'd people his plot with all kinds of minor characters that didn't need to be there. He was not above making a joke or pun for the sake of the pun itself. Just because he got away with it more often than not is not a good reason for them being there. If you look at Hamlet, it's basically a monster. Four thousand lines long, with an unnecessary thousand line interlude for that silly stock convention of the play within a play. Hamlet goes away, comes back, meets people, orders a corn dog, gets captured by pirates, escapes. There's a reason why people can cut half of his play for productions and retain a coherent story. Aeschylus tells the same tale in his Libation Bearers which uses a third as many characters and is only 1100 lines long.

I admire your attempt to be open minded and rethink the play, but if Winter's Tale is a late experiment in the author's life, then I think it was still a failed experiment. Let's not forget that experimentation means trying something new, which is unprepared for, and you don't necessarily know the outcome ahead of time. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't need the money and was just writing these lousy plays from his retirement for fun. But that doesn't account for his lackluster early plays like Henry VI, which seems to me like juvenilia based on Marlowe and Holinshed.

What I'm trying to say is that Shakespeare doesn't need apologists. His own triumphs witness his honor and if Dante's other books don't stand up to The Divine Comedy, at least he wrote the Divine Comedy. Does that make any sense?

Janine--Glad you found the blog entries interesting. Since you asked, I may see if I have a little time to comment further on this play. I see there's no thread for act 5. Are you guys planning a discussion for that act, or have you run out of steam. I think the end is my favorite bit of this play.

Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

This Humanist, whom no belief constrained,
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
-J.V. Cunningham

So true, Mortal. I hadn't heard the Cunningham before. Possibly it's been subtly banned from academic circles.

As for your post, I think you've misunderstood my intent in making these comments on WT. I am sure that this is a result of my somewhat clumsy and hasty expression rather than any fault on your part. I certainly didn't intend to come across as (gasp) a Shakespeare apologist. Indeed, I intended the above thoughts to convey quite the reverse of a sublimely infallible Shakespeare turning out nothing but masterpieces. I had in mind instead a Shakespeare who was quite clearly experimenting in this play, with rather rough results. I was not trying to deny that the results were a bit messy and uneven, but trying to account for the existence of these rough results so late in the playwright's career by suggesting that he was trying something new, I have no problem saying that Shakespeare wrote some not so hot plays, and I most definitely think Winter's Tale is one of his weaker ones. Certainly there are plenty of flaws in many of his plays. I think I was taking that stance too much for granted when presenting the above. My aim was to look at what might be interesting about this particular play that had been chosen for discussion, and to suggest that perhaps it wasn't a total write off, not to suggest that it was in any way as successful a play as, say, Hamlet (though how many are ). At any rate, I agree with much of what you say. A few comments:

But Shakespeare wasn't interested in plot. It wasn't his strength, which is why he didn't write any original compositions of his own.

I'll agree with you that Shakespeare wasn't too fussy about the plot, and seemed to grab on to whatever caught his fancy, looked like it might sell seats, or was handed to him. I would generally agree that one can't read too much into the choice of basic source plot. However, I'm going to have to disagree if, as you seem to be doing, you're collapsing all reference to structure under the umbrella of "plot." What he does with the source plot in terms of structuring the play is sometimes significant. Shakespeare often does not have a tightly constructed structure in the sense of tying every single thread up neatly at the end, obeying the dramatic unities (something I'm not certain he ever does), or creating a streamlined plot. There is, however, a fair amount of thought going into the structuring and presentation of the source plot(s). In many of the better plays it is evident that he has thought out how scenes should speak to other scenes across the play, how language should mirror the language of other points in the drama. It is this attention to the way all the lines, the scenes, the characters interact with each other that is partly (though not wholly) responsible for producing the rich psychology of characters like Hamlet or Lear, and this is due to a certain attention to structure. (Hoping the above is clear. It's quite late and I've an early flight tomorrow).

If you look at Hamlet, it's basically a monster. Four thousand lines long, with an unnecessary thousand line interlude for that silly stock convention of the play within a play. Hamlet goes away, comes back, meets people, orders a corn dog, gets captured by pirates, escapes. There's a reason why people can cut half of his play for productions and retain a coherent story. Aeschylus tells the same tale in his Libation Bearers which uses a third as many characters and is only 1100 lines long.

Oh, absolutely Hamlet's a bit of a "monster" structurally, and surely going to win no prizes for brevity. I'm fully aware, too, that even Hamlet has it's flaws. Still, much as I like Aeschylus, had I the choice of being stuck on a desert island with nothing to read but one of these two, I think I'd take Hamlet over Libation Bearers any day, and I think all that wandering about has something to do with that. This may, however, purely be a matter of personal taste.

I admire your attempt to be open minded and rethink the play, but if Winter's Tale is a late experiment in the author's life, then I think it was still a failed experiment. Let's not forget that experimentation means trying something new, which is unprepared for, and you don't necessarily know the outcome ahead of time. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't need the money and was just writing these lousy plays from his retirement for fun.

This being, I think, the pith of your post, let me say that this is all I meant by examining the play as an experiment. I intentionally chose that word because I think that's exactly the way in which the play is interesting to think about. I did not mean to imply that it was a wildly successful experiment. Imagining him writing these out for his own amusement is just the sort of thing I had in mind. I think he may have been intrigued by the problem of how to convey something like a prose romance in the confines of a dramatic form and that he was thinking through how that might work when writing these plays. The conclusion I've come to, having seen the attempts, is that there's a reason Romances are usually significantly longer than plays. That sort of structure ultimately doesn't quite work out in a dramatic form. (Though, I must say I would love to see a well acted production of Winter's Tale one of these days, since I always similarly felt that Cymbeline was an utter dramatic failure only to be amazed at how wonderfully it played on stage. Not in the same league as a similar quality production of Lear, but much better than I would have expected.) So, absolutely I meant it's an experiment in terms of a transparent experiment in which we can see him trying things out, some of which work and some which don't, however I think it is quite interesting to look at in those terms. It's also interesting to look at the experimental nature of this one along with Pericles and Cymbeline in terms of the way the things he's tried out in them are either dropped or put to use in the undoubtedly superior play, The Tempest.
This is, of course, only one suggestion to explain the poorer quality of these plays. Another possible factor is that he may have been increasingly working with collaborators on these plays, which might also account in part for their uneven qualities. (Though, even if true, I still think there's an experimental interest in playing with new types of genre at work in these plays).

But that doesn't account for his lackluster early plays like Henry VI, which seems to me like juvenilia based on Marlowe and Holinshed.

Again, not much to argue with there. Obviously his starting out period was also a time of experimentation, figuring out what would work and what wouldn't, as well as a time of imitation. While there are things to be said for the Henry VI plays, they are not his most inspiring work. And I defy any apologist to find a way to to turn Comedy of Errors into anything remotely resembling a masterpiece.

Petrarch, any further thoughts on that Act Iv Scene 4. It is so long. You would have thought that Shakespeare would have integrated the sub plot in pieces rather than mostly all at once.

Originally Posted by Mortal

We make excuses for the flaws we find in our friends, or the people we like. Some people just don't like to admit that Shakespeare has flaws, most notably in plot structure.

Quite right Mortal. I was excooriated here once when I began pointing out some flaws in Hamlet. I consider Hamlet a great play, but i do not think it is a perfect play.

Petrarch, I did find it interesting and helpful and the followup I just finished reading - all your responses. They all make perfect sense to me. I have seen it performed (well on a DVD) by the RSC and it is quite good, although I too see many flaws and it is long and some drawn out. I like the switch to the pastoral scenes. I like certain parts of the dramatic scenes emensely, such as the trial of Hermoine and the way she speaks to the king, her husband and the assembly. Up until then I was dubious about the actress playing Hermoine but in this scene she really proved herself and gave a fine performance. The actor playing Leonetes was ok; he acted more crazed than I would have expected; he even played it with a bit of a tick to his neck. I was not sure what to think entirely of his performance - parts were good and some a bit odd. I loved the couple who played the lost daughter and the young prince. The dance scene was delightful and very playful. I think Shakespeare shown here with the pastoral elements. I agree that the play does seem to be very experimental. It flips from dire drama to comedy to pastoral and back and forth too rapidly at times. I found that confusing and annoying. I like the play but I can't say it is my favorite Shakespeare play. I like some other minor one and yet they are not my favorites, but I still can enjoy them in production or on audio or in my reading. It is quite different, I think, to see WT performed, rather than just read the lines from the book.

Virgil:

What did you think of my thought that Shakespeare contructs Leontes on a mentally ill paranoic person? Of course I don't think Shakespeare completely understands mental illness (and perhaps that's why Leontes' character switches too easily) but I think he models Leontes on a mentally ill person, of which I'm sure he must have encountered in his personal life.

I agree that Leontes is behaving in a paranoid manner. As to to the extent that he is or is not mentally ill, I think that's open to interpretation. For one thing, I think it depends upon exactly what you mean by mentally ill. I don't think his character reads like someone who is schizophrenic, for example. At the same time his behavior certainly appears sick in terms of coming across as irrational and paranoid in nature. Though in some ways we do have better ways of defining mental illness than they did in Shakespeare's day, all the same we still struggle with the question of what constitutes mental illness on a routine basis in our courts. What judgment should the jury pass on the guy who, seemingly out of the blue, one day goes home from work and shoots his wife because he believes she's been running around on him? Should he get away with an insanity plea because his mind was imbalanced at the time? Most people who get to the point where they're murdering someone are sick and deranged in some way. Are they all mentally ill, or have some simply allowed their baser emotions to get the better of them? Some people may have a long history of mental illness and have honestly had some uncontrollable delusion so that they were not themselves when they committed a crime. Others may have been sick in a different way, but not necessarily delusional to the point that they were consciously unaware of their actions. You see where I'm going. It's not all that easy a question to answer even today.

Apart from the complicated question of how we define insanity, I think it's difficult to define much of anything about a character like Leontes. One function of the Iago character in Othello is that he functions both as the catalyst for the action of the play, and also as a convenient sounding board so that the entire process of Othello becoming jealous is unfolded in detail for the audience. Because of the Iago character we have more sympathy for Othello, not only because we can transfer our blame to Iago the mastermind, but also because we have heard what's going on in Othello's mind: how he got from being a regular guy to a jealous murder. Othello is actually pretty sick himself by the end of that play, but we tend to think more sympathetically of him, are less likely to think his jealousy is wholly irrational, because we know him better and recognize part of him in ourselves. Leontes, on the other hand, we hardly know at all, and what we see is incredibly unlikable and irrational. As I suggested above, I think Shakespeare is trying to experiment some with how the Othello character changes when more about him is held back. So little is explained about Leontes, that I think he could be played in any number of ways. I can easily imagine a production in which he is played as a total nutcase. On the other hand, one could also play the scene as though he were exactly like Othello, with some sort of back story that has been building up offstage, leading him to this point. The dialogue between him and Hermione in which she is telling him to be nicer to his friend is a lot like some scenes between Othello and Desdemona, so the scene could be played with a lot of tension right from the start. A professor of mine says he once saw a production in which Leontes was right and Hermione and Polixenes kiss on stage (though he thought this didn't play very well, and I tend to agree that it doesn't sound like a good interpretation).

All this to say that I don't think there's enough there to make any firm statement about the exact degree of Leontes' madness or lack thereof, but that I think it's one perfectly reasonable way of reading or performing the play.

Petrarch, any further thoughts on that Act Iv Scene 4. It is so long. You would have thought that Shakespeare would have integrated the sub plot in pieces rather than mostly all at once.

Sure. I'd be happy to talk a little more about that scene. It is, indeed, monstrously long. Let me run over and see what's been said about act 4 on the thread and then post when I have the time (which may be a couple of days...dissertation pressures).

Janine--Thanks. I'll have to check out the RSC film one of these days. I agree that some of the pastoral scenes of delightful potential.

No not schizophrenia but paranoia. Here: http://www.depression-guide.com/paranoia.htm. Leontes seems to have delusions of conspiracies. Paranoia with delusions is a mental illness in its own right.