The Elizabethan interest in Russia extended to Russians' physical characteristics, which would likely have figured in stage representations of Muscovites. Anthropologically the Russians, like the Czechs and Slovaks, belong to the Slavic peoples. "The Great Russians are mostly of the characteristic Moujik type with a squarish face and heavy features, reddish-blond hair and orange-brown . . . eyes. These in the main are the Muscovites of history."⁶

Turning to Leontes, king of Sicilia and the husband of Hermione, we note that he would have belonged to the Mediterranean type, the physical characteristics of which are "wavy or curly black hair, an average stature of about 5 feet 3 inches, slender build, long head and narrow oval face, straight nose rather inclining to be broad; the eyes are very dark."⁷ Thus Leontes would be a distinct contrast to Hermione in appearance, and this distinction should be made by directors of stage and film productions of The Winter's Tale. What exacerbates Leontes' insecurity and sexual jealousy could well be the physical and cultural affinity that Polixenes has with Hermione. Polixenes, king of Bohemia, is, like Hermione, of Slavic descent. The Czechs and the Slovaks both belong to the western branch of the Slavic peoples. Around the fifth century A.D. both tribes migrated south and settled in what became Czechoslovakia, with the Czechs in Bohemia in the west and the Slovaks in Slovakia in the east.

But the affinity between Polixenes and Hermione is more than merely anthropological; it is cultural as well. Hermione's easy familiarity with Polixenes, so galling to Leontes and so grievously misunderstood by him, springs not from a perversity of nature but from his misinterpretation of the social mores and customs of northern Europe to which they belong. That in the company of Polixenes Hermione is revealing a facet of her personality totally unknown to Leontes is implied in his aggrieved recollection of her restraint when she was wooed by him:

Why, that was when
Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death,
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,
And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter
"I am yours for ever."

(I.ii.101-05)

And it may not be too far-fetched to suggest that Leontes' "thy white hand" is ironic, the adjective having resonances suggestive of racial difference. Shakespeare had already explored this subject in Othello, a play whose striking correspondences with The Winter's Tale have been noted in Shakespearean criticism. A dark complexion, often associated with the south, carried connotations of cultural and social inferiority, as may be seen, we recall, in Beatrice of Much Ado about Nothing, a play also often regarded as a precursor of Othello and The Winter's Tale, and whose setting is Messina, one of the chief cities of Sicily. Beatrice wryly attributes her failure to find a husband to her complexion: "Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burnt. I may sit in a corner and cry 'Heigh-ho for a husband!'" (II.i.318-20).

The sexual freedom enjoyed by women of the north was something totally denied to the women of the south. The striking opening sentence of Maria Pia di Bella's essay "Name, Blood and Miracles: The Claims to Renown in Traditional Sicily" states this well: "As is well known, honor looms large in the daily life of Mediterranean peoples. . . . The elements that constitute the honor of the group and the criteria by which it is granted seem to be . . . the chastity of its women; . . . the courage of its men on the battlefield and, whenever their point of honor is at stake, in the home community; their ability to defend their women from blemish."⁸

In contrast to the restrained behavior of the women of the south, the freedom exercised by northern women was easily misconstrued as licentiousness by the southerners. The following passage from Robert Burton is only one of many drawing a distinction between the two cultural practices: concerning "those northern inhabitants," Burton writes:

Altomarus, Poggius, and Munster in his description of Baden, reports that men and women of all sorts go commonly into the baths together, without all suspicion; "the name of jealousy" (saith Munster) "is not so much as once heard of among them." In Friesland the women kiss him they drink to, and are kissed again of those they pledge. The virgins in Holland go hand-in-hand with young men from home, glide on the ice, such is their harmless liberty, and lodge together abroad without suspicion, which rash Sansovinus, an Italian, makes a great sign of unchastity.⁹

Burton's book was not published until 1621, but as Anthony Gerard Barthelemy points out, it "codifies opinions that were in currency long before its publication."¹⁰

Act I, scene ii of The Winter's Tale, when enacted on Shakespeare's stage so as authentically to represent physically visible differences between the national origins of Leontes, Hermione, and Polixenes, would have encoded a semiotics that the audience would have intuitively grasped and understood, as easily as we today, for example, understand what long and unkempt hair, a frayed shirt, tattered jeans, and open sandals denote. As Allesandro Serpieri points out, drama has a semiotics of its own, quite distinct from a literary text:

A semiotic reading of the dramatic text must be aware not only of the cultural pragmatics of its historical context, but also of the potential pragmatics of the stage relationships that are inscribed in the strictly verbal make-up of the text itself in accordance with the codes and conventions (both general and historical) of the genre. In a word, critical enquiry into the contextual values of the drama should be carried out with a view to its specific semiotic complexity, a complexity quite distinct from that of literary genres, which are not conditioned by directions for a more-than-verbal use.¹¹

In addition, I would like to argue for a further differential between Sicily and Bohemia that aggravates Leontes' aggression, is partly responsible for Polixenes' long nine-month visit to Sicily, and is the reason for his hasty and terrified flight from the country without the observance of the customary protocol. During the sixteenth century, Sicily was prosperous economically and enjoyed political stability, while Bohemia was in both these respects in a state of decline. True, much earlier, in the fourteenth century, Bohemia had emerged as a powerful nation under Charles I, whose reign was considered a golden age. Charles University in Prague, named after him, was the first university to be founded in eastern Europe. But by the sixteenth century Bohemia had all but lost her intellectual supremacy in Europe. Internecine conflict on religious and political issues had divided the country, and the tyranny of the Bohemian nobles had pressed the masses of the population into virtual serfdom. In 1618 occurred the famous Defenestration of Prague, and, as already noted above, the Hapsburgs, beginning with Frederick, son-in-law of James I of England, took control of the country by invitation and ruled it for three centuries thereafter.

In contrast to Bohemia's economic and political distress, Sicily during this period was flourishing. The granary of Europe, she exported vast quantities of grain to the north. "[T]he ever-growing demand for grain in the cities of northern Italy, Provence, Catalonia, helped transform extensive areas of Sicily and Apulia into large farms concentrating on the cultivation of wheat for export."¹² In fact, by the beginning of the seventeenth century the whole of Italy was one of the most highly developed regions of western Europe, with an exceptionally high standard of living for that time. It hardly needs to be pointed out that during this period the Renaissance in Europe had reached its peak in Italy, and the cultural gap between Italy and Russia was at its widest. Foreign travelers were amused at the barbarous and revolting behavior of the Muscovites, as the following account shows: "Filthily dirty, clad in long, cumbersome garments which prevented all free movements, unkempt hair down to their shoulders, and matted beards, they behaved hoggishly at table dipping their black and greasy fingers indiscriminately into plates and dishes, always eating too much and drinking noisily and greedily out of unwashed vessels."¹³ The economic power and cultural prestige of Italy in comparison to the rest of Europe—and to Bohemia in particular—is reflected in the play's opening scene in which Archidamus, a Bohemian courtier, confesses with obvious embarrassment that Bohemia cannot possibly match Sicilia's lavish style of hospitality:

Verily I speak in the freedom of my knowledge: we cannot with such magnificence—in so rare—I know not what to say—We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses (unintelligent of our insufficience) may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us. (I.i.11-16)

The assertion of superiority on the part of the court of Leontes over Polixenes and his entourage that gives rise to the "insufficience" of Bohemia is seen in the bullying infliction of the forms of hospitality by Leontes upon his reluctant guest, who has long outstayed his welcome and is now on sufferance. Literature does not merely reflect reality; it encapsulates and assimilates it, often so thoroughly that text and context are indistinguishable. To capture this "political unconscious" (Frederick Jameson's coinage and the title of his best known book) we must look not so much at political history as seen in the letters, diaries, and sermons of the period but rather at what was happening on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage.