If asked, I will generally say my favorite of William Shakespeare’s plays is King Lear. If pressed a little further, I’ll say my second favorite is, of all things, The Winter’s Tale. I actually had the pleasure to see a production of it years ago as part of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival. I’d been to see plays there twice in my life, once for a great production of Othello and once for The Winter’s Tale. Both were great.
But why do I love The Winter’s Tale so much? It’s not usually counted among Shakespeare’s greats, but, well, see below.
Notable cast members: My parents enjoyed the BBC’s take on Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett decades before Benedict Cumberbatch would take on the role, and while Brett isn’t in this, his Watson David Burke is on hand as Camillo one of two nobles of high moral standing that prevent kings from making huge mistakes.
Trivia: Like some of the other later productions, the BBC decided to make this one more theatrical in appearance, confining all the action to the same set despite the fact the action takes place in different seasons and different countries (Sicily and Bohemia to be precise). The thing to look for is a tree in the background and the colors of the set to indicate the seasons.
The play: The thing I always say about The Winter’s Tale is it is three acts of tragedy followed by two acts of comedy where almost everyone gets a happy ending. Yes, young Mamillius (arguably the only kid in Shakespeare who isn’t an obnoxious quip machine) and nobleman Antigonus are still dead, but everyone else seems to get what they want and may or may not deserve. Heck, many productions, including the one I saw live but not the BBC’s, use the same actor as both Mamillius and his sister Perdita to suggest she somehow takes his place in the family at the end of the play. In truth, The Winter’s Tale is part of a catch-all genre Shakespeare scholars sometimes call a “romance”–as good a genre as any given how all-over-the-place the play is–and it might as well be called that since it does feature two royal families coming together when a prince and a princess who doesn’t know she’s a princess meet and fall in love.
And yes, this is the play with the most famous of Shakespeare’s stage directions: “Exit, pursued by a bear”. Truth be told, given the bear-baiting arenas in the same neighborhood as the theaters, it may have been possible for Shakespeare and his company to have used an actual semi-tame bear. But we don’t know and productions since then have had to come up with whatever they are going to use for the bear scene. This production uses a guy in a (not very convincing but it doesn’t have to be) bear suit.
It’s probably worth noting that despite the fact the first three acts cover the tragedy of a king suddenly driven mad with unearned jealousy that his friend, another king, may have impregnated his wife, that doesn’t mean the comedic portion of the play, a real pastoral festival to beat all festivals, is given short shift in terms of time. Act 4 of this play, particularly the last scene depicting the sheep sheering feast where a lowly shepherd can briefly speak verse, is easily the longest in the play and the act starts just before the halfway point in this production.
As for the rest of the play, it does have a hazy, dream-like look to it whether the scene is winter or spring. It’s a play where disguises work, rogues can be helpful when they aren’t selling worthless trinkets and picking pockets, and a king sometimes needs to be reminded how to do the right thing. Leontes of Sicily needs to learn to trust his wife while Polixenes of Bohemia needs to learn to trust his son’s feelings. Everyone does, two royal households unite, and I walk away satisfied. It’s a play that includes just about every Shakespearean thing and a bear, and unlike a couple of other plays Shakespeare wrote with those sort of qualities (minus the bear), this one works.
Grade: This was a good one, a good adaptation of one of the lesser-known plays, and the production really played up the fairy tale/dream-like aspects. A-
Next: Well, one of Shakespeare’s lesser and odder tragedies is up next we we visit Timon of Athens.
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