[In the essay below, Hieatt examines "the adherence of mortals to a standard of ideal behaviour" as the shaping principle which forms a coherent basis of the play's structural segments.]

I

That The Winter's Tale presents an experimental, twopart structure has been generally agreed since the time of Thomas Price, a late Victorian critic who described the play as 'a genuine diptych', the first part of which is 'a tragedy and the second a comedy'.¹ On the other hand, opinion of the success of this structure has changed radically, the once maligned gap in time between Acts III and IV now being regarded as less a flaw than an index of Shakespeare's over-all design. Whereas Price found that 'in passing from part to part, the mind loses grasp of the artistic unity',² Nevil Coghill sees the end of Act III as 'a kind of dramaturgical hinge, a moment of planned structural antithesis'.³ And while Northrop Frye also calls the play a diptych, he finds coherence in an arrangement 'of parallel and contrasting actions, one dealing with age, winter, and the jealousy of Leontes, the other with youth, summer, and the love of Florizel'.⁴ Thus, in the modern view, Shakespeare achieves unity through a significant balance of elements on either side of Time's central chorus: events such as Perdita's two ocean voyages and the attempts to stay the departures of Polixenes and Camillo in Acts I and IV would appear to establish a certain architectural symmetry, while others would seem to join the two parts in the cross-referential manner of the Elizabethan double plot.⁵ As Dr Tillyard pointed out, 'Florizel and Perdita re-enact the marriage of Leontes and Hermione, but with better success'.⁶ Moreover, as Frye has observed, these contrasting illustrations of imperfect and perfect love develop complementary views of the same theme.

Florizel's love for Perdita, which transcends his duty to his father and his social responsibilities as a prince, is a state of mind above reason. He is advised, he says, by his 'fancy':

If my reason
Will thereto be obedient, I have reason;
If not, my senses, better pleased with madness,
Do bid it welcome.

Leontes' jealousy is a fantasy below reason, and hence a parody of Florizel's state.⁷

It is clear that the play presents contrasting illustrations of the effects of sinful as opposed to virtuous fantasy, and the behaviour of Leontes in the first three acts supports Frye's claim of a mutual theme of reason overcome by passion. While partly agreeing with this modern approach, however, I am convinced that both the theory of a bilateral structure and the current idea of the unifying function of parallel action are erroneous. Recently, Philip Weinstein has questioned the merit of Florizel's behaviour, finding his idealism inadequate to the occasion, his irrational love to some extent an echo of Leontes's jealousy; Weinstein observes that the motifs of symbolic regeneration are not resolved at the end of the Pastoral Scene and claims that 'to the degree that such motifs remain unresolved, the scene will mirror, not redeem, life as we have seen it in that fatal country Sicilia'.⁸ So disparaging a view of Florizel is unfounded. It is true that irrational passion twice leads to Perdita's exile, but this does not mean that the young lovers, like Leontes, are morally at fault; indeed, a comic conclusion to the play depends upon Florizel's behaving as he does, and, from the audience's point of view, a resolution to the young lovers' difficulties is all but promised at the end of the Pastoral Scene when Camillo directs them to Sicily. But Weinstein's point that the Pastoral Scene reproduces an earlier pattern is none the less a valuable one. Regardless of its significance, the action in Bohemia does mirror that in Sicily, and the similarity between the first three and the fourth Acts suggests that a two-part view of the play accounts for only a portion of a larger, more complicated scheme. As for the alleged unifying function of parallel action, the linear development of The Winter's Tale denies that its structural segments are linked primarily by cross-reference. Events are arranged chronologically throughout and, unlike those of the double plot, bear not only a comparative but a sequential, cause-and-effect relationship. Thus, despite their disjunctive nature, the structural segments will cohere on the basis of an over-all shaping principle, while their parallel action will have the secondary function of underscoring and redefining this principle in terms of theme.

II

To deny the modern theory of unity in The Winter's Tale is to re-confront the old complaints of fragmentation and an inappropriate mixture of tragedy and comedy. In seeking an over-all shaping principle, one might therefore look to the implications of the play's comic reversal, which occurs in Act III when a providential intelligence wrests control from Leontes and shows itself responsive to human desire. The forces of moral order in Shakespearian tragedy remain in the background and allow a kind of roughshod and unpoetic justice to take its course, but the death of Mamillius immediately following the oracle's announcement that 'the king shall live without an heir'⁹ confirms the presence of a supernal being who had foreseen the wilfulness of Leontes and planned to punish him accordingly. Furthermore, if Apollo can punish he can also forgive, and the possibility that 'that which is lost' may be 'found' suggests to an experienced audience the promise of a brighter future. Subsequently, Perdita's escape and imminent return at the end of Act IV anticipate the accuracy of this suggestion, and evidence of divine ordination seems even greater on Hermione's resurrection near the end of Act v. Her unexpected awakening momentarily implies that the tale is a comic myth, a story in which the Divine is both controller and hero, with the unlikelihood of tragedy turned to comedy explained as being a result of providential power and mercy.

Inherent, then, is a strong sense of allegory, and a pattern of sin, penance, and forgiveness has led a number of critics to describe the play in terms of Christian doctrine.¹⁰ Weinstein, on the other hand, sees 'great creating nature' as the agent of a controlling power that remains undefined,¹¹ while still others have seen Nature herself as a force whose cyclical benediction renews life through the springtime love of Florizel and Perdita. But to emphasize an other than human element in this way is to disregard the essentially mundane forces that govern the play's outcome. Mamillius's death may well represent divine punishment, and Hermione's resurrection need not be an actual return from the dead to symbolize miraculous intervention. In the end, however, Shakespeare reveals that her death and resurrection were illusory, though he might easily, and perhaps more credibly, have presented them as real. By the same token, the reconciling power of love in the Pastoral Scene is not joined with nature, as C. L. Barber illustrates is the case in Shakespeare's middle comedies, in a 'compelling rhythm that orders men's affairs'.¹²

Seasonal imagery, festivity, and mistaken identity are all evident, but these things do not signify confusion or lack of self-control on the part of the young lovers, who, like all of the principal characters, have a share in effecting a comic ending. What allows the play to proceed beyond Act III is not so much Apollo's intervention as that of Paulina, whose shrewish courage in Act n introduces a note of humour, and whose intimidation of Leontes first suggests that he is something less, and more, than the irreconcilable tragic hero. The possibility of development from 'tragedy' to comedy is gained by Leontes's partial response to good advice in allowing Perdita to live, and thus the possibility of his redemption may be traced to his own actions, while redemption itself will also require something more than Apollo's mercy. Although the oracle suggests a brighter prospect to an audience, it predicts alternatives that depend on human behaviour and therefore claims for the gods only a limited control within the fictional world. That 'the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found' gives the mortals primary responsibility for effecting a happy ending: Hermione must remain hidden from her husband, as her earlier disclosure would signify an intention to produce an heir; for the same reason, Leontes must not remarry but remain contrite and faithful to the memory of his queen until their daughter returns; the younger couple must place their love above fear of reprisal if Perdita is to leave Bohemia; and Camillo must retain his love for Leontes if he is to direct Perdita homeward.

In so far as the oracle is understood by the fictional characters, of course, it constitutes a direct command and therefore imposes a measure of control over them; but in no sense is it a covenant guaranteeing reward for specified behaviour, nor is it obeyed primarily from a regard for religious duty. Paulina argues that Leontes's remarriage would disobey the 'tenor' of Apollo's words and 'to the heavens be contrary' (v. I. 38, 45), but Leontes at this point has already declined his counsellors' advice in memory of his love for Hermione. Hermione, in her greater awareness, is more directly responsive to the oracle; as she says, it 'gave hope' that her daughter was alive, and she remained hidden in order 'to see the issue' (v.3.127, 128). But she has no assurance of finding Perdita, and, like that of Leontes, her continued celibacy depends on enduring fidelity rather than dutiful obedience or the certainty of coming reward. Hence the principal characters reunite themselves by independently preserving what Leontes had allowed his passion to destroy, and their combined efforts cohere with the 'tragic' action in a continuous illustration of the results of imperfect and perfect love.¹³ To be sure, Apollo aids a desirable outcome: a timely dream causes Antigonus to abandon Perdita where she will be protected by shepherds and later discovered by Florizel. But if serious romance can admit the supernatural, its shaping principle is the adherence of mortals to a standard of ideal behaviour; while divine justice and mercy are part of the scheme, the play, like Arthurian and Renaissance epic romance, takes primary meaning from a demonstration of human influence over human destiny.

III

The relationship of structure to this shaping principle is most easily approached through a comparison of The Winter's Tale with its source, Robert Greene's Pandosto. In the first section of the original story, Pandosto's jealousy of his childhood friend, Egistus, results in the exile of his daughter, Fawnia, and the death of his son and wife. Subsequently, the scene changes to Egistus's realm where Fawnia is found and brought up by shepherds, is courted by Prince Dorastus, and for the second time escapes a king's wrath as she flees with her lover. Finally, the scene shifts again to Pandosto's court, where Fawnia is unsuccessfully wooed by her lustful father before she is identified and the joy of her return and marriage to Dorastus is offset by Pandosto's guilt-inspired suicide. Thus the major difference in the two plots is in their endings: in Greene a comic outcome involves the mortification of the evil Pandosto, in Shakespeare the restoration of Leontes and Hermione to their former felicity. Despite these different conclusions, however, the fundamental pattern of the two stories is identical, and the play therefore presents a more complex structure than is generally recognized. The first movement in both works constitutes a discrete segment of fictional time, a single 'organic action' (to use Bernard Beckerman's terminology of dramatic structure),¹⁴ in which a king's passion runs its dreadful course and the initial dramatic conflict is brought to a standstill. But in contrast with this 'tragic', falling action, the events rising to comic reconciliation in both play and novel comprise two integral movements, the one dealing with young love, the other chiefly with the further adventures of Pandosto and Leontes. The dramatic conflict in the first part of The Winter's Tale is, in effect, re-enacted between the young lovers and Polixenes, and matters are again brought to a standstill with the removal of those accused of conspiring against the king's interests. Furthermore, this second organic action is also followed by a major shift in time and place, which in turn precipitates another organic action ending with the return of Hermione. Thus, rather than symmetrical events on either side of Time's chorus, Perdita's two ocean voyages are structural interruptions that precede and initiate second and third movements, much as Polixenes's voyage to Sicily initiates the first. Like Greene, Shakespeare employs a three-part structure, each part having its separate setting and grouping of characters, its individual reversals of fortune and mood, its discrete increment of fictional time.¹⁵

This is not to deny the pivotal effect that is enhanced by Time's chorus at the centre of The Winter's Tale; as Emrys Jones points out, the Shakespearian pattern of equally apportioned action and reaction that A. C. Bradley noted in the tragedies is clearly present here.¹⁶ At the same time, however, Shakespeare develops fully his usual comic pattern of oppression, mistaken identity, and final clarification in a series of structural segments that in combination make up the whole. Moreover, if the conspicuousness of the central break between Acts III and IV has tended to obscure this tripartite structure, it has likewise drawn attention from a coinciding triptych of parallel actions and language that Shakespeare also shares with Greene. Acting under false assumptions, Pandosto allows his 'reason' to be 'suppressed with rage' (p. 190) and passes an unlawful judgement upon his wife, and this series of impelling circumstances is twice repeated: in the second part as Dorastus finds that his unlawful love for the unidentified Fawnia is 'not to be suppressed by wisdom, because not to be comprehended by reason' (p. 205), and in the third as Pandosto is also attracted by a mere shepherdess and vainly seeks 'by reason and wisdom to suppress this frantic affection' (p. 219). Similarly, The Winter's Tale presents three occasions on which a prince labouring under false assumptions approaches the daughter of a king to deny both reason and law in judging the propriety of her outward appearance and her suitability as a bride. In Act I Leontes illogically claims that Hermione's strayed 'affection . . . dost make possible things not so held' (2.138-9), his illegal judgement of her ironically foreshadowing the central events of Act IV, where Florizel also ignores a counsel of 'reason' in favour of 'madness' and 'fancy' and finds himself 'heir to my affection' (4.482 ff.). And so, too, in the ceremonial Statue Scene at the end of the play, passion and reason are once again dramatically opposed as the king steps forward to judge the merits of a queenly guise. Having exhibited what is assumed to be a mere counterfeit of Hermione, Paulina turns to Leontes (1. 56) and offers to close the curtain and thereby end the ceremony. Leontes twice rejects this and, responding to her alleged fear that his 'fancy' will belie reality, adopts Florizel's earlier attitude: 'No settled senses of the world can match / The pleasure of that madness' (11. 72-3). Paulina then mentions that she could 'afflict' him further, to which Leontes agrees, and having addressed the statue he attempts to kiss it. Finally, her last offer to close the curtain (1. 83) is followed by her announcement that, although it may seem 'unlawful', she can make the statue move, and the assent of Leontes completes a third judgement in which fantasy has been preferred to reason.

So close a resemblance between plot, structure, and cross-referential technique, moreover, suggests that the two authors have the identical intention of illustrating varied qualities and effects of motivating passion. In both stories jealousy is ugly and self-defeating, but love enlists our sympathy and predicates creative rather than destructive results; and although the endings differ, they would appear to demonstrate the same governing principle: Pandosto's suicide contrasting with the triumphant marriage of Dorastus, and the fidelity of Leontes and Florizel bringing its similar rewards. But if this is Greene's purpose, he fails to realize it, primarily because the implications of the parallel action in Pandosto conflict with the principles of heroic romance. Fawnia owes her safe conduct back and forth across stormy seas to an arbitrary and capricious 'Fortune', and any evidence of human control over the course of the plot is denied by the inability of Greene's characters to control themselves. Dorastus refrains from imposing his will on Fawnia, and his eventual oath of loyalty in trothplight is also commendable (p. 212); but the central conflict in Greene's pastoral scene is Dorastus's interior struggle between prudent disgust for so demeaning a marriage and what proves to be overwhelming sexual desire. Like Pandosto, he caroms helplessly between the dictates of reason and passion, and his surrender to Fawnia's charms implies no pertinent alternative to Pandosto's jealousy and lust, but merely proves that he, too, is passion's victim rather than its lord. Despite a surface of fashionable moralizing, the overriding point in Greene's story is the similarity of crucial events whose governing principle is the mysterious power of the emotions to 'perplex' and subdue the mind. Consequently, although a single theme illustrated in similar circumstances imparts a certain unity to the tale, an inherent disavowal of human responsibility deprives its three parts of further rationale for their juxtaposition, either as contrasting moral exempla or as a continuous demonstration of human influence over human destiny.

These contradictions are resolved in The Winter's Tale, chiefly through a far more elaborate use of cross-referential action to redefine the theme of motivating passion. Shakespeare omits Dorastus's anxious soliloquies that show love victorious over reason, as he does the events that explain and nearly justify Pandosto's suspicion of his wife, the point being that reason is neither a necessary prologue to jealousy and love nor always a suitable means for confronting them: like all humankind, Leontes and Florizel on attaining sexual maturity unavoidably became subject to that 'stronger blood' that Polixenes implies is 'heriditary ours' (1.2.73, 75), and neither man can support his behaviour on the basis of circumstantial evidence. But while an implied comparison shows the fallibility of passion and reason, it also shows that one's actions should none the less be based on unhampered judgement and a recognition of prior commitments. Unlike Dorastus, Florizel has no qualms about his loved one's social status, and his intuitive perception of Perdita's merit condemns Leontes's biased judgement of her. Moreover, in Shakespeare's version of the story the young lovers have already dared to 'mingle faith' (IV.4.461), thereby entering into a formal contract that raises their relationship above the illusive sway of the affections; like Leontes and Hermione, they are pledged from their first appearance in eternal trothplight,¹⁷ and thus a comparison of the two men's behaviour is morally significant. Having succumbed to passion, Leontes eclipses his 'faith' with his 'folly' (I.2.429, 430); but while Florizel acknowledges himself heir to his affection, he nevertheless rejects both passion and reason as unreliable guides to be transcended, according to his 'oath' and his 'honour', in view of his 'faith' (IV.4.335, 478, 492). His state of mind, as Frye says, is above rather than below reason; moreover, it is above passion as well, and it therefore redefines Leontes's irrational jealousy as a lack of constancy in love.

Confined to Florizel and Leontes, however, the comparison is incomplete and somewhat misleading. If Florizel has sworn allegiance to Perdita, he is also bound in duty to his father, and that the latter obligation predates the former would seem to lend support to Philip Weinstein's argument for Florizel's culpability. But the point here is that the dramatic conflict between father and son that Shakespeare brings to the tale repeats the formal judgement scene of Act III from a different perspective. As king and magistrate, Polixenes gathers what appears to be incontrovertible evidence of Florizel's guilt, and his verdict, though given in anger, is measurably justified. As an enemy to love, however, he ignores the primacy of honourable trothplight because he finds his own 'honour' in jeopardy (IV.4.437). Like Leontes, he misjudges Perdita, debases his own offspring (IV.4.419-20), and discovers an illicit relationship where none exists. Thus, although Weinstein is correct in saying that the Pastoral Scene mirrors 'life as we have seen it in that fatal country Sicilia', the echo of Leontes's jealousy that he hears in Florizel is in fact sounded by Polixenes, the implication being that the young prince stands between two irreconcilable claims to choose the greater. Although exile is 'desperate' Florizel 'needs must think it honesty' (IV.4.488) and, in rejecting his father's appeal to reason, he actually employs reason to choose the more honourable course.

Furthermore, implication is followed by proof when at the end of the Pastoral Scene the method of Shakespeare's alterations is fully revealed. In retrospect, one can see that the second movement imitates the sequential development of the first, passing from a stayed departure, to suspicion of sexual treachery, to a picture of the impassioned lover, controversial views of Perdita, a climactic judgement scene, and exile. But exile results from different causes, and it elicits different responses from the gods, whose actions as an integral part of the parallel sequence are morally definitive. Blinded by anger, Leontes orders that his child be burnt and, although this sentence is modified by the influence of Paulina, Antigonus dutifully abandons Perdita to chance and probable death. But Leontes's judgement is overruled when Perdita is inadvertently conveyed to safety, and his punishment is confirmed when Antigonus dies for his obedience and the shepherds resolve to suppress her identity. Impelled by love, Florizel also causes Perdita's exile, and again a 'ponderous and settled project' is modified by courageous advice. But Florizel acts against misused authority, and his contrasting behaviour causes what had been arranged by the gods as an equally contrasting response. Whereas Antigonus's dream of the weeping Hermione had directed Perdita to Bohemia, Camillo's vision of Leontes's joyful welcome redirects her homeward (IV.4.548), and whereas the shepherds had unknowingly condemned Leontes, the decision to reveal their secret endorses Florizel's behaviour by anticipating his reward.

Shakespeare continues this technique in the third movement, employing the pre-established sequence and varying the individual action to demonstrate a varied result. The plea of Cleomenes and Dion at the beginning of Act v, that Leontes remarry and produce an heir, is to be compared with the stayed departures of Polixenes and Camillo in Acts I and IV. Alike in their brevity and expositional function, each of these occasions presents a character who is urged to neglect a primary duty to someone he loves, and thus a series of initiating motifs emphasizes the tripartite structure and calls attention to the theme of fidelity under stress. In the third movement, however, this motif coincidentally advances the parallel sequence, the whole of which will now have a dual reference. In remaining true to his vow to revere Hermione, Leontes reverses his initial behaviour and, in taking an oath not to remarry until she returns, he stands, as had Florizel, between private and public obligations to choose the greater. Next, Perdita's worth is once again defended and then denied, and again a king becomes suspicious of sexual treachery. Leontes's question, 'Is this the daughter of a King?', is omniously iterative, as is his remark that Florizel has broken from 'where you were tied in duty' (v. 1.207, 212). But on this occasion the judge is amenable. Whom he once would have burnt and Polixenes have scratched with briars, Leontes now can wish to have for himself; where Polixenes had found only dishonour, Leontes finds a more important bond than filial duty, so long as 'honour' is 'not o'erthrown by your desires' (v. 1.229); and whereas a disregard for the sanctity of trothplight had caused dishonour and confusion, the willingness of Leontes to intercede on the lovers' behalf is immediately followed by the discovery of Perdita's true identity.

Hence, the sequence to this point represents a corrected re-enactment of the past. Leontes's present fidelity to Hermione would have forestalled the unhappy consequences of his passion, and with a proper judgement of Florizel's behaviour Polixenes's objections to the match disappear. At the same time, Leontes's imitation of Florizel also indicates that Perdita's return has been a joint enterprise. While Florizel is responsible for initiating the chain of events that led her homeward, these events are allowed to occur because Leontes has remained constant to his own trothplight in the face of similar demands that he recognize his duty to the state. Moreover, Leontes's reversal of his behaviour as lover and magistrate provides both cause and model for his further redemption. In the Statue Scene Paulina assumes Polixenes's former role as she interrogates the lover surreptitiously, urging prudence while disguising her ability to react to his decision. But Paulina is aware of the gods' secret purposes, and her response, like theirs, will be compliant and morally definitive. Overwhelmed by the statue's authenticity, Leontes fancies that it is truly his queen and accepts responsibility for Paulina's bringing it to life, an act that, as she says, may appear 'wicked' and 'unlawful'. Furthermore, Paulina draws attention to the full meaning of his decision when she says that 'It is required / You do awake your faith' (11. 94-5). Here, again, 'faith' assumes its literal meaning, denoting the fidelity mutually sworn in anticipation of formal wedlock; as elsewhere in The Winter's Tale, the term is synonymous with 'trothplight' and 'contract'¹⁸ and represents an ideal whose violation sets man against himself and his society, but whose veneration effects integration and harmony. Leontes is required to reaffirm his faith in order to recover his bride, and with his command to 'proceed', Paulina beckons Hermione from her pedestal in a final demonstration of the power of fidelity to make possible things not so held.

While repeating both theme and pattern, moreover, parallel action in this last movement is made to carry an additional burden, the index to which is a calculated challenge to our credulity. Because Florizel and Leontes have already earned their rewards, events follow one another with little sense of cause and effect, and the third movement becomes progressively more artificial as we encounter the sheer unlikelihood of the Statue Scene. That Paulina and Hermione would subject their king to so elaborate a reconciliation is quite improbable, and for withholding the true state of affairs from his audience Shakespeare has been accused of sacrificing credibility to an expedient bravura ending. Furthermore, this departure from previous standards of versimilitude is not to be explained in terms of generic convention. Improbability is sometimes meant to be tolerated by an audience as a part of the comic spirit, and, as Leo Salingar has pointed out, conspicuous artifice at the end of Shakespeare's comedies often provides a contrast with what has gone before and thereby enhances and 'testifies to a reality within the spectacle'.¹⁹ But in The Winter's Tale terminating artifice imitates an established sequence of events, and although these events are obviously improbable they are to be seriously regarded as a part of the reality of the spectacle.

Unaware that Hermione is alive, we no longer share the author's Olympian point of view in the Statue Scene and are enjoined with Leontes to expect the impossible. But our experience, though similar, is qualitatively different. As in the first movement, Leontes must choose between love and reason, and a willingness to renew his trothplight is only one of several indications of his continued devotion and the true lover's denial of reason. As onlookers, however, we do not undergo a trial of allegiance to Hermione, and thus we hear in Paulina's call for faith overtones of the word's religious usage, which signifies objective trust in a merciful, all-powerful deity, and which is favoured by the allegorical critics.²⁰ But the word as addressed to the audience merely borrows from its religious meaning, Paulina's stipulation, as Frye points out, being a call for the 'imaginative faith' necessary to grasp the truth that art has to offer.²¹ The several references to developments in the play as being like an 'old tale' raise the question of the ability of art to reproduce nature and anticipate our own reaction to an analogous but more complicated set of circumstances. Having witnessed the means of Perdita's escape and return, we do not share the amazement of the fictional characters on learning her true identity; what to them seems miraculous is to us the final result of a series of independent actions. But in the Statue Scene we are equally nonplussed on being told that Hermione can return to life, while at the same time our memory of a parallel sequence strongly suggests that she will,²² and thus an apparent conflict between art and reality in the minds of the audience requires that we, like Leontes, undergo a trial of faith. While referring to black magic, Paulina's denial that she is about 'unlawful business' also indicates our obligation to continue to suspend our disbelief and trust in the verity of the artistic illusion. Like Time, she asks that we 'impute it not a crime' if the usual 'law' and 'custom' of dramatic probability are temporarily overthrown, but, unlike Time's, her tone is imperative and implies that we, too, must deny reason and momentarily accept, not only that the impossible will occur on the stage, but that its occurrence will represent an accurate imitation of life. Without a personal commitment to fidelity as a guide more valuable than reason, we are not qualified to appreciate the truth of the Statue Scene and do not deserve to share in Leontes's reward. Like him, we should regard Hermione's awakening as an 'art lawful as eating', and hence we are required to acknowledge our trust in the power of love to achieve and art to represent what we do not yet understand, or else to rise early from our places and leave the theatre.

Notes

¹ Thomas R. Price, The Construction of A Winter's Tale', in Shakespeariana, VII (1890); quoted from The Winter's Tale': A Casebook, edited by Kenneth Muir (London, 1968), p. 44.

² Price, p. 45.

³ 'Six Points of Stage-craft in The Winter's Tale', Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), p. 53.

⁴ 'Recognition in The Winter's Tale', in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama, edited by Richard Hosley (London, 1963), p. 235.

⁵ See Ernest Schanzer, The Structural Pattern of The Winter's Tale', Review of English Literature, 5, No. 2 (April, 1964), 72-82 (pp. 78 ff.).

⁶ E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Last Plays (London, 1938), p. 22.

⁷ 'Recognition in The Winter's Tale', pp. 236-7.

⁸ 'An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale', SQ, 22 (1971), 97-109 (pp. 97, 102).

⁹The Winter's Tale, edited by J. H. P. Pafford (London, 1963), III.2.134-5. For convenience, quotations in my text from both The Winter's Tale and Robert Greene's Pandosto are taken from this Arden edition, with page references to the latter work which appears there as an appendix to the play.

¹⁰ See, for example, S. L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale': A Study (London, 1947), and Jerry Bryant, 'Shakespeare's Allegory: The Winter's Tale', Sewanee Review, 63 (1955), 202-22.

¹¹ 'An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale', p. 109.

¹²Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959), p. 9.

¹³ For a similar view of the play as an illustration of the power of love rather than 'an allegory of resurrection', see Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, edited by Geoffrey Bullough, 6 vols (London, 1966-75), VI, 153.

¹⁴Dynamics of Drama (New York, 1970), pp. 41-2.

¹⁵ Pafford recognizes a three-part structure but does not argue the point; see The Winter's Tale, p. liv.

¹⁶ See Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy (1904; reprinted London, 1960), p. 51, and Emrys Jones, Scenic Form in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1971), pp. 68-9.

¹⁷ Shakespeare most often employs 'faith' with its literal meaning of 'trust, observance of trust, pledge', or 'troth' (see OED and Barlett's Concordance), and the words 'faith' and 'trothplight' are virtually interchangeable throughout the play. Florizel refers to his trothplight as early as IV.4.49-51, and, although it is not yet celebrated publicly, it is recognized as valid by Leontes in v.3.149-51.

¹⁸ For a discussion of Shakespeare's use of the two terms and of the legality of the trothplight, see Pafford's note, The Winter's Tale, I.2.278.

¹⁹Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (Cambridge, 1974), p. 23.

²⁰ See Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: The Last Phase (London, 1954), pp. 190-91, and Bryant, 'Shakespeare's Allegory', pp. 217-18.

²¹ Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective (New York, 1965), pp. 18-19.

²² Though it is not necessary that one's memory be precise; as William Empson says of the double plot, parallel action 'does not depend on being noticed for its operation'. See Some Versions of Pastoral (London, 1935), p. 25.