The Winter’s Tale Act One – “We were as twinned lambs that did frisk I’ the sun…”

The Winter’s Tale Act One – “We were as twinned lambs that did frisk I’ the sun…”

Shakespeare seemed to be on the crest of a wave again around the end of 1609 and the beginning of 1610. His sonnets had been published, the Globe Theatre was doing well. His investments in property in Stratford-upon-Avon were paying dividends. But it seemed like the tide was starting to turn on the Thames and the London theatre scene. His plays were popular with the general public, but a new fashion seemed to be attracting the middle and the upper class.

Ben Jonson and his crowd were staring to collaborate with a designer and architect called Inigo Jones. Drawing on inspiration from new indoor theatres in Italy, they had started to put on plays in venues and in people’s houses with a arch in front of the scenery which framed it. This proscenium arch famed the action like a painting and was starting to develop a new presentational form of acting. Both the proscenium arch and this style of acting seemed directly against the more natural approach to playing that Shakespeare’s work and the Globe Theatre seemed to be encouraging. What’s more Inigo Jones had become a favourite of King James I and his wife Anne of Denmark and with Anne’s encouragement, masques were becoming all the rage and overtaking plays as the preferred court entertainment, entertainment in the upper classes’ houses and even become popular with the rich merchant class. Shakespeare thought that this would die out as a fad since it probably seemed odd fashioned and medieval to him. He had included many dumbshows or mimes in parts of his plays, but the elaborate masque balls at court, the popularity of plays with Inigo’s sets and costumes probably made Shakespeare rethink the issue of how to combine a good plot with what seemed to be becoming more than a fashionable fad.

For ‘The Winter’s Tale’ Shakespeare turned to Robert Greene’s 1588 pastoral romance ‘Pandosto’. Shakespeare enjoyed pastoral romances in his youth and early days as a playwright and as he grew older, these types of plays brought back a sense of nostagia. He realized he didn’t need to change Greene’s plot too much. He would keep the theme of fidelity and infidelity and change a few plot twists but would add a huge masque scene which would involve character transformation and plot revelation and end the play with a reconciliation between the main characters Hermione and Leontes to a coup de theatre.

The play starts in the kingdom of Sicilia, where King Leontes has had his childhood fiend King Polixenes of Bohemia staying for a while. Camillo, a Sicilian lord and  Archidamus, a Bohemian lord discuss the differences between the kingdoms of Sicilia and Bohemia and the longstanding friendship between their kings. As they exit, King Leontes enters with his wife Hermione (in the advanced stanges of pregnancy), Mamillius (Leontes and Hermione's son), and King Polixenes. Polixenes is about to finally leave for home after staying in Sicilia for nine months but Leontes is trying to plead with his friend to stay a little longer. Leontes then asks his wife to convince Polixenes to stay. Hermione succeeds in convincing Polixenes to stay and Leontes is taken back by this since Polixenes would not yield to his requests. However, Leontes thanks his wife for her persuasiveness. Leontes says that the only other time that Hermione spoke to such great purpose was when she agreed to marry him. Then Hermione and Polixenes walk off together in conversation and something stirs in Leontes.

Leontes is filled with jealousy and talks to the audience to tell them this as his child Mamillius innocently plays.  
“Gone already!
Inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one!
Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't;
It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel't not. How now, boy!”

By the end of this sequence Leontes is convinced that Hermione and Polixenes are having an affair. Then he ushers his wife to walk with Polixenes in the garden. Leontes then calls his lord Camillo over and asks him whether he has noticed anything strange in Polixenes' behaviour.  When Camillo says that he has noticed nothing, Leontes reveals that he thinks Camillo is wrong and that Hermione and Polixenes are having a secret affair. Camillo, is shocked and says that the queen could never be disloyal.

Leontes continues to voice his suspicions and gets Camillo to agree to act as a cupbearer to Polixenes and to poison Polixenes at the first chance but when Leontes leaves Camillo seems very disturbed by what he has been asked to do. When Polixenes re-enters and mentions how Leontes seemed very strange and distracted when he just passed him, Camillo reveals to Polixenes about Leontes suspicions of an affair between Hermione and Polixenes and of how Leontes wants Camillo to poison Polixenes.Camillo asks for Polixenes to protect him. Polixenes accepts and takes on Camillo as his servant. Camillo says he will help them escape Silicia safely and Polixenes says his ships are already and they should escape jealousy in Leontes will probably grow quickly and greatly.

“I do believe thee:

I saw his heart in 's face. Give me thy hand:

Be pilot to me and thy places shall

Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready and

My people did expect my hence departure

Two days ago. 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, and as he does conceive

He is dishonour'd by a man which ever

Profess'd to him, why, his revenges must

In that be made more bitter. Fear o'ershades me:

Good expedition be my friend, and comfort

The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing

Of his ill-ta'en suspicion! Come, Camillo;

I will respect thee as a father if

Thou bear'st my life off hence: let us avoid.”