SOURCE: Studing, Richard. “Shakespeare's Bohemia Revisited: A Caveat.” Shakespeare Studies 15 (1982): 217-26.

[In the following essay, Studing argues that Act IV of The Winter's Tale demonstrates that rural Bohemia is not a refuge from the vices of the court but rather a similarly corrupt world.]

In approaching the pastoral scene in The Winter's Tale as an idyll and place of relief from the falseness and misery of courtly life, commentators have dwelled, generally and specifically, on the simplicity, naturalness, and pristine values of Bohemia. The entire country scene, with its trappings of shepherds and shepherdesses, sheep-shearing festival, dances, rustic foolery, and rustic lovemaking, has often been idealized as an Arcadia, an Eden of love, friendship, and good will. Edwin Greenlaw considers it to be “the most exquisite and satisfying pastoral in Elizabethan literature.” Much in the same spirit, G. Wilson Knight believes the Pastoral Scene “sums up and surpasses all Shakespeare's earlier poetry of pastoral and romance.”¹

More specifically, much consideration has been given to the simple nobility and virtue of country life, which are thought to outshine vigorously the woe and destruction bred in Sicilia's court. The natural piety and conduct of the old Shepherd and his son, for instance, have been singled out as somewhat naive but nevertheless virtuous exempla eclipsing the uncharitable deeds committed by King Leontes. Perdita has been frequently cited as the most profound symbol and promise of rebirth in the pastoral world. She is looked upon as a fertility goddess who, along with the movements of nature, will bring the spring of new life out of the wintry barrenness ushered in by Leontes' passion. Perdita's frank, innocent relationship with Florizel, contrasted with the sinfully infected love of her parents, is viewed as further assurance that her symbolic role will be fulfilled spontaneously and naturally. Moreover, because of her noble birth and country nurture, Perdita is thought of as the natural bond between Sicilia and Bohemia. Therefore, she is seen as an integral part of the court-country theme, symbolizing the union of the two kingdoms. Florizel, too, is said to take on mythic qualities that complement Perdita's symbolic stature. He is associated with the folklore figure of the lover prince who possesses the innate ability to recognize immediately the real character of his rustic queen. And he is, in the words of S. L. Bethell, prepared “to sacrifice royalty for love.”²

However, this highly idealized approach praising the prettiness, congeniality, and morality of Shakespeare's pastoral is only one side of the story. And, in actuality, not a very strong side at that. It is true, as Philip M. Weinstein suggested, that in this scene Shakespeare has departed far from pastoral conventions and that the realism of the scene exposes the inadequacy of the idealism it attempts to convey.³ But what of pastoral convention and realism in The Winter's Tale—how do they work? I suggest that the pastoral mode is really used not as convention but, rather, as a vehicle to develop and forward the story. It is convention only in that it serves as a traditional scenic contrast to life at court. Act IV, Scene iv can be viewed as antipastoral in that the pastoral tradition (including realism) is subordinated to and submerged in dramatic exigency. Instead of pastoral convention or conventions, we have pastoral devices that function to mirror courtly values and echo Leontes' sinful passion. Especially in context of the first three acts of the play, the situations of pastoralism often cast a negative aura on country life.

In the structure of The Winter's Tale, no one and no place are exempt from the passion of “that fatal country Sicilia.” In Bohemia, Polixenes is overcome by an egocentric, tyrannic passion akin to Leontes'. Perdita endures a fate similar to Queen Hermione's when Polixenes learns of her relationship with Florizel, and like the Queen, she is forced to flee royal wrath. Florizel's departure from paternal tyranny parallels the death of Mamillius who, unlike his counterpart, did not possess the years nor the strength to survive his overwhelmingly tragic environment. The shepherds, too, by succumbing to the riches of court are victims of Sicilia's corruption. These and other “pastoral” echoes and reflections of courtly life cannot be ignored. The general pastoral formula of posing a serious “value-contrast” between the pastoral world and another kind of society does not work out satisfactorily in the drama.⁴ The objective of my essay is to examine the pastoral scenes of the play in light of their dramatic value, with particular reference to structure and theme, and to show, as Harold Jenkins says of As You Like It, that “In city or country, all ways of life are at bottom the same.”⁵

The immediate connection between Leontes and the Bohemian countryside occurs in the first time sequence of the play with the appearance of the Shepherd in Act III, Scene iii, just after Antigonus has exposed the infant Perdita to the elements and he is pursued and destroyed by the bear. The Shepherd's opening lines (59-67)⁶ before discovering Perdita are revealing:

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—Hark you now! Would any but these boiled-brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master.

Suggestively, the references to “youth,” “getting wenches with child,” “stealing,” and “fighting” point to the complexities of the Leontes-Polixenes conflict. In this context, “wronging the ancientry” recalls Leontes' violation of kingship by his tyrannic impositions on his aged counselor, Camillo, and, for that matter, the entire court. Even the plight of the Shepherd's two best sheep, who have been scared away and are now lost and liable prey for the wolf, brings to mind Leontes' treatment of Mamillius and Perdita;⁷ at the same time, it forecasts the oncoming danger of Florizel and Perdita at the hands of Polixenes. When the Shepherd finds the deserted infant, he gives an accurate appraisal of the situation: “This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door work” (III.iii.73-75). The Shepherd's remarks are reflective of past action: the jealous suspicions of Leontes; his devious plot for revenge; the escape of Polixenes and Camillo; the abandonment of Perdita; and retrospectively, they suggest Paulina's grand clandestine plan of Hermione's concealment. In a contracted statement, the Shepherd has recapitulated, by indirection, the core of events of the first three acts. But the emphatic warning of the antipastoralism of the Bohemian setting comes when the Shepherd, joined by the Clown, discovers the “bearing-cloth” accompanying the infant. Here we learn that rural Bohemia is a fallen world, “a world of corruption” that will live “out an immense fraud.”⁸ The optimistic and humanitarian aspect of the discovery of the founding, which is often referred to, is clouded by an excessive concern with “fairy gold”: “look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open't. So, let's see: it was told me I should be rich by the fairies” (III.iii.115-16). Furthermore, the Shepherd discards his lost sheep, the staple and symbol of pastoral life, in favor of rushing off to the cottage with the riches of court: “Let my sheep go: come, good boy, the next way home” (III.iii.124-25). From this point on, the corrupted pastoral becomes a dominant theme in Act IV.

Like Act III, Scene iii, the first two scenes of the fourth act are transitional; although Act IV, Scene i is a bridge and introduction to the pastoral world in the drama's new time sequence and Act IV, Scene ii actually begins that sequence. The awkwardly structured first scene does, in its own way, look forward to new action, and it reflects on activities during the sixteen-year time lapse as well. In his cryptic manner, Time says that he tries “all” with “both joy and terror / Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error” (IV.i.1-2). Time has already tried Leontes, the breeder of error, and in consequence the innocent Mamillius has been taken by the scythe of death. Right at the moment of Time's appearance, both Leontes and Hermione are suffering in reclusive existence, deprived of the fruits of marriage. Also, Time's speech can be directed at Bohemia: the country swains who get “wenches with child,” the shepherds enthralled by wealth, and the future tyrannic outbursts of Polixenes, for example. Of course, Time does, by spanning “that wide gap,” fulfill his obligation by telling us of Leontes' penitential seclusion, bringing us to “fair Bohemia,” and informing us of the status and maturity of Perdita.

Besides placing us in the new time sequence in Bohemia, Act IV, Scene ii has an expository function. And, concomitantly, the scene echoes some of the themes we have previously encountered, giving dramatic coherence to the play in spite of the time gap. As exposition, both Polixenes and Camillo declare, and certainly with much emphasis, that Florizel (recalling Prince Hal) is delinquent from his filial and princely obligations and that he is involved with “a most homely shepherd” who has “a daughter of most rare note” (IV.ii.39, 42-43); this naturally introduces the Florizel-Perdita episodes to come. Dramatically, the delinquency of Florizel is a restatement of the theme of separation between parent and offspring. On the level of romance, Florizel's absence and involvement in “happier affairs” are neatly explained by his mythic role of the lover prince who pursues the disguised princess, wins her, flees with her from parental opposition, and after much complication attains felicity. However, this explanation oversimplifies and perhaps confuses the more complex structure of the play. For Polixenes must, out of dramatic necessity, enact the part of tyrant in order to generate the drama to resolution in Sicilia. As shown in the sheep-shearing scene, Polixenes' attack on Florizel and Perdita is closer to the tyranny of Leontes than the conventional senex figure of New Comedy. Thus, the restatement of the separation theme in Florizel's absence from court should be considered in the same light as the Leontes-Mamillius and Leontes-Perdita relationships. Finally, Act IV, Scene ii emphasizes rustic wealth. We are informed that the Shepherd has assumed courtly values and risen to high estate in rural Bohemia. Polixenes himself is astonished when he speaks of a “man, they say, that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate” (IV.ii.39-41). Structurally, the ornamented rusticity of the Shepherd's cottage becomes the focal point of the main action and complication of Act IV, and therefore attracts and gathers the principal characters for movement back to Sicilia and denoument of the play at Leontes' court.

Critics have considered Act IV, Scene iii a bridge to the sheep-shearing festival and observed that, by means of farce, this scene affords the playwright an opportunity to introduce Autolycus into his dramatic scheme. Aside from its excellent farce, the scene, because of its comic sophistication, becomes an ironic commentary on the characters and situations in the play. Indeed, when Autolycus enters the rustic world, he dupes and even robs the gullible Clown in what has been said to be a parody of the Good Samaritan Parable; but Autolycus does not enter a world of innocence. In view of his hilarious comic spirit and genial corruption, the rogue has been associated with Falstaff and called the Lord of Misrule of The Winter's Tale. Virtually, misrule has governed the drama long before his arrival. It might be said that Autolycus, like the old Shepherd, is a realist who, as best he can and in the only way he can, takes advantage of what opportunity offers him.

Autolycus' opening lines, including his two songs, establish him as a linking character between court and country. From the bits of information concerning his history, we see that he is another embodiment of courtly sophistication and corruption invading the Bohemian countryside; this time the corruption comes from the quarter of Polixenes' court. We hear, for instance, that Autolycus is an ex-courtier who has fallen from court favor and degenerated to the ranks of thievery and roguery. Now, he tells us, he is “out of service” (IV.iii.14) and has been “whipped out of court” (IV.iii.87)—undoubtedly because of vice. The most startling thing is that he was in the service of Florizel, and we wonder if the prince ousted the rogue. This, of course, relates Autolycus to Polixenes and Camillo and even the infant Perdita, all of whom have been, so to speak, whipped out of the Sicilian court by Leontes. Surely, Florizel can be added to this consort when he leaves his father's court for the refreshing affairs of the country. Very clearly, Bohemia and its rural regions have become a haven for exiles and outcasts.

The comic encounter of Autolycus and the Clown at lines 32-120 obviously prepares us for the climax of Act IV at the country festival. More than this, it brings to the foreground a variation on the theme of rustic wealth. On his appearance, the Clown is engrossed and preoccupied with an extraordinary list of items which Perdita desires for the celebration: sugar, “five pound of currants, rice … saffron to colour the warden pies,” and spices. To augment this fantastic list, an extravagant musical entertainment is planned. The Clown, not as dull-witted as we might imagine, is quick to remark that his sister “lays it on” (IV.iii.40). This excessive, if not ostentatious, show of finery tightens the bond between court and country even more.

Act IV, Scene iv, with its festive splendor and colorful spectacle, comes closer to courtly grandeur and extravagance than to the rustic simplicity of a rural feast.⁹ The elaborate preparations, dances, songs, and performers, three of whom, we are told, “hath danced before the king” (IV.iv.337-38), indeed, give the impression that rusticity has been overwhelmed by aristocratic artifice. In fact, the natural world has been so converted that Florizel succumbs to its seductiveness by calling it “a meeting of the petty gods.” The artificiality of the sheep-shearing scene is extended to the characters, who, like performers in a play within a play, act out their roles in disguises and false identities. Perdita is the glorious queen allied with Flora, “Most goddess-like prank'd up,” and Florizel is her lowly swain. Polixenes and Camillo, too, play their parts as disguised mock visitors. As the prince states, the gods have undergone a metamorphosis: they “have taken / The shapes of beasts upon them” (IV.iv.26-27). Autolycus' singing entrance with his pack of disguises and cosmetics is a comic remark on the whole situation. Later, Autolycus and Florizel switch costumes, and the old Shepherd and Clown are transmuted into courtiers in the final act.

The conscious artifice of the festival and Perdita's prominent role as its queen incite us to believe that the Shepherd has designed this feast for the sake of Florizel—to impress and enchant him. For Perdita is well aware of his royal station and the Shepherd knows him “To have a worthy feeding” (IV.iv.171) and offers to match Florizel's “portion” with an equal dowry for his daughter (IV.iv.385-87). Perdita herself displays élan and a great seductive power. Her rustic beauty not only wins the adoration of the prince, but it also charms Polixenes and Camillo. Camillo, after receiving flowers from her, says:

I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.

(IV.iv.109-10)

And Polixenes is taken with this “prettiest low-born lass” that “smacks of something greater than herself, / Too noble for this place” (IV.iv.156, 158-59). Florizel is intoxicated by the loveliness of Perdita, and he is caught up in the movement and sweep of festival. Although the “year [is] growing ancient” (IV.iv.79), the prince views his queen as “Flora / Peering in April's front” (IV.iv.2-3). Most certainly, she is his goddess, and for her, he, like a Proteus, transforms and humbles himself as an obscure swain.

There has been a good deal of commentary on the art-nature “debate” between Perdita and Polixenes (ll. 79-103) and its relationship to Renaissance theories of art. The center of the various critical discussions of the “debate” has been the contrast of Perdita's argument favoring the purity of nature over the false, mimetic quality of art, and Polixenes' belief that art improves nature. Moreover, it has been recognized that there is irony in Polixenes' position. In opposing the union of Florizel (“gentler scion”) and Perdita (“wildest stock”), he contradicts the application of his own theory to produce a “nobler stock” by means of grafting. The irony is much deeper and dramatically organic than this, because it strikes at the heart and foundation of the fusion of court and country. Considering Polixenes' viewpoint, and he is not aware of it, the values and artifice of courtly life have already been fused or grafted with the “wildest stock” of Bohemia. Later in the scene, to cite another instance, we witness the country girls, Mopsa and Dorcas, hovering about Autolycus' wares of “Masks for faces,” necklaces, and “Perfume for a lady's chamber” (IV.iv.223-25); the maidens are eager to embrace the sophistication of the city. When Perdita says to Polixenes:

                    … the fairest flowers o' th' season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them

(IV.iv.81-85)

she, as rustic goddess and queen, somewhat violates her own argument. Like the flowers she finds distasteful, Perdita is herself a misfit, who stands out radiantly and extraordinarily in her environment. Perdita realizes her behavior and attire exceed her position and expresses this self-consciously on two occasions: first to Florizel,

                                                                                                                                            Your high self,
The gracious mark o' th' land, you have obscur'd
With a swain's wearing, and me, poor lowly maid,
Most goddess-like prank'd up

(IV.iv.7-10)

and, again, after Polixenes' rage, when she will “queen it no inch farther, / But milk [her] ewes, and weep” (IV.iv.450-51). What she does not realize, however, is that, in her desire to consummate her love for Florizel in marriage, she is taking Polixenes' stand in the “debate”; both she and the prince are attempting to complete the grafting process suggested by Polixenes. At this point, neither lover is aware of Perdita's royal birth.

From the “debate” up to Polixenes' tyrannic destruction of the feast at lines 419-42, the pagan, festive tempo of the scene increases: music, dance, love, and sensual rhetoric are highlighted. Once again, we are reminded that the Bohemian festival has become a spectacle far beyond the compass of rural pleasure. Perdita, who has been transformed from goddess and queen to an innocent flower maiden, now assumes the role of a risqué May Queen. In an enticing rhapsody, she praises the joys of sexual fulfillment and is aggressive in her display of love to her prince. Reminiscent of the poetry of Herrick, Perdita laments the growing maidenheads of youth and the fact that she has no “flowers o' th' spring”—flowers that symbolize fertility and youthful potency—for either Florizel or the rustic maidens. And in sexual language, she recalls Juno, Cytherea, and the flowers of the early year:

                                                                                … pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids).

(IV.iv.122-25)

Perdita's expression of love overpowers Florizel: she would “strew him o'er and o'er” with garlands and flowers “like a bank, for love to lie and play on” (IV.iv.129-30), and would have him “quick, and in [her] arms” (l. 132). Her direct erotic statements and Florizel's enthusiastic response:

                                                            When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ord'ring your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' th' sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function

(IV.iv.136-43)

culminate in a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses, a dance of fertility symbolizing their sexual union.

Following this entertainment and the songs of Autolycus and the rustic girls, a group of carters, shepherds, neatherds, and swineherds enters disguised as “men of hair” to perform a dance of twelve satyrs. Beyond its contribution to the festive spirit of the scene, this dance, too, has significance. Traditionally, the satyr figure, with its lascivious nature and repulsive aspect, represented disruption of order and the basic struggle between the two parts of man: body and spirit. Regarding theme and motif, the appearance of the satyrs embodies and amalgamates all the overt and suggestive expressions of lust and bawdy which have appeared in the drama up to now. As we know, lust first originated as a germ in the fantasy and diseased psyche of Leontes. It was then manifested in his dream of jealousy and unfounded bawdy rhetoric, and it has appeared intermittently ever since. Perhaps it is dramatically appropriate to conjure up, in this extremely histrionic fashion, the play's motif and link the satyr figure to Leontes. In connection with the Bohemian countryside, the dance of the satyrs is further indication of the imposition of court on country. The dance itself is a property of court values and entertainment,¹⁰ and it is King Polixenes who, with gusto, welcomes the wild dancers: “You weary those that refresh us: pray, let's see these four threes of herdsmen” (IV.iv.335-36). Dramatically, the dance signals the destruction of the feast and the attempted destruction of the love of Florizel and Perdita. Immediately after the dance, Polixenes states to Camillo: “Is it not too far gone? 'Tis time to part them” (l. 345), a preface to his reenactment of Leontes' tyranny.

The tyranny of Polixenes replicates in several ways Leontes' passionate outbursts earlier in the play. Most obviously, Polixenes attempts to destroy love, and he therefore violates the natural potential of procreation. In the case of each king, the love to be destroyed is closely related to the tyrant himself. Upon unmasking himself from his disguise, Polixenes attacks Perdita in the same vindictive, hostile manner Leontes employed against Hermione. Both kings view the female as seductive and promiscuous. Leontes sees his wife as a playful “adultress,” a “bed-swerver,” who is big with Polixenes' child (II.i.88, 93); and Polixenes calls Perdita a “fresh piece / Of excellent witchcraft” and “enchantment,” who has opened “these rural latches” to royalty (IV.iv.423-24, 435, 439). His bawdy language surely echoes Leontes' jealous speeches. Further, Polixenes' threats to have Perdita's “beauty scratch'd with briars and made / More homely than [her] state” (IV.iv.426-27) and his belligerent treatment of the old Shepherd bring to mind Leontes' terrible plans for his family and friend. At this moment of dramatic crisis in the pastoral world, Polixenes has transformed himself into a personification of the grotesque satyr figure which he had enthusiastically welcomed to the festival.

The splendor, extravagance, and dream texture of the sheep-shearing festival have been shattered. And all the characters are awakened to the reality of sin and its destructive force. The youthful dreams of love and marriage, the dreams of enlarged rustic wealth, and the “courtly illusion” of rural Bohemia are reduced to the coarseness of Polixenes' act. For salvation, the inhabitants of the green world must make flight, must “make for Sicilia,” and confront the seat of original sin.

The festive beauty and dramatic energy of Shakespeare's pastoral are undeniable, and it is an appropriate prelude to the incredible statue scene in Act V. Also, there is no question that Act IV, Scene iv foreshadows a regeneration and rebirth of the old Sicilian world. However, “pure symbolic rebirth” and pastoral idealism are blemished by realism; it is not so much the realism of E. M. W. Tillyard's view of country life “given the fullest force of actuality,”¹¹ but dramatic realism: the realism of a pastoral world which has inherited the values and fallibilities of court, a pastoral world that needs regeneration and resolution itself. For dramatic coherence, the pretenses and conflicts of Bohemia must, like Sicilia, be unmasked and resolved. These pretenses and conflicts are what John P. Cutts sees as an “immense fraud” and what Philip M. Weinstein means by Bohemia's “vivid and conflict-breeding realism (so unexpected in pastoral).”¹² From this standpoint, Act IV, Scene iv and the other country scenes counter the nature of pastoralism. Bohemia is not a refuge offering a serious value contrast to another society. In The Winter's Tale, the tensions of court and country must completely unwind, which occurs in the final act when Hermione “awakens.” This kind of resolution is demanded by the play's structure and themes. Certainly, readers and viewers who insist upon highly idealized interpretations of the Bohemian pastoral run a risk, like the characters themselves, of being lulled into idyllic dreams.

Notes

1. Edwin Greenlaw, “Shakespeare's Pastorals,” Studies in Philology, 13 (1916), 146; G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Final Plays (London: Methuen, 1948), p. 102.

2. S. L. Bethell, “The Winter's Tale”: A Study (London: Staples Press, 1947), p. 73.

3. Philip M. Weinstein, “An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 102. In his study of the romances, Howard Felperin points out that “naturalness” in Bohemia is not to be equated with “virtue,” Shakespearean Romance (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), p. 233. For a survey of the history of the pastoral tradition (including pastoral realism) from the Theocritan idylls to The Winter's Tale, see Jerry H. Bryant, “The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Tradition,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 14 (1963), 387-98.

4. See Weinstein, p. 101. Here he deals with this matter in reference to W. W. Greg's study, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (New York: Russell & Russell, 1959).

5. Harold Jenkens, “As You Like It” in Pastoral and Romance: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Eleanor Terry Lincoln (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 115.

6. All references to the play are from J. H. P. Pafford, ed., The Winter's Tale, New Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1963).

7. Thematically, the death of Mamillius is as significant as Leontes' rejection of Perdita. At II.iii.13, Leontes extends his passion and error to Mamillius by stating that his son's illness is caused by “the dishonour of his mother.” Leontes further remarks that in his sickness Mamillius “Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, / And downright languish'd” (II.iii.16-17). Earlier, Leontes had separated the boy from his mother (II.i).

8. John P. Cutts, Rich and Strange: A Study of Shakespeare's Last Plays (Pullman: Washington State Univ. Press, 1968), p. 73.

9. For an examination and interpretation of the spectacular elements of the play, especially the pastoral scene, see my article, “Spectacle and Masque in The Winter's Tale,” English Miscellany, 22 (1970), 55-80.

10. See Pafford, ed., The Winter's Tale, p. 110, for background and scholarship regarding the dance of the twelve satyrs.

11. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Last Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), p. 43.

12. Cutts, p. 73, and Weinstein, p. 97.