The first three acts of The Winter’s Tale contain the tragedy of the play. The final two acts, based on the principles of comedy, resolve the tragedy. King Leontes accuses his faithful wife Herimone and best friend King Polixenes of adultery. He flees to save his life and she is put on public trial. She stands firm in her defense; the king will hear none of it. Even a message from the oracle claiming her innocence does not set with the king: the oracle is wrong in the mind of the demented royal. Their son Mamillius has taken ill over his mother’s plight, and with the denial of the oracles decree, dies. His death represents the loss of grace. It is Leontes versus the truth, and he and his family and his kingdom will lose and suffer. Once the imagination becomes corrupt, man is capable of anything. Shakespeare is showing us in the short span of these first three acts what will take centuries for the world to reap as the consequences of denying the Roman Catholic Church. But this is a play of hope, and the final two acts resolve the damage done in the fist three.
Comedy, the conflict of the individual verses society, rules this fourth act. The story now shifts to Bohemia, and we get a sense that this is a simpler land, a land of peace and grace. This is a new world. This new land is protected in some manner, a place of small problems but not large destructive patterns. The infant daughter of Leontes and Herimone, Perdita, who was ordered by her father to be abandoned in the woods to die, was saved and is now 16 years old. She knows nothing of her parentage. She hasm become a woman filled with grace, like her mother Herimone. She has fallen in love with Prince Florizel, son of King Polixenes, and the father has refused the marriage. Camillio, now the good servant to Polixenes, but places loyalty to the truth above loyalty to man, spirits the young couple back to Sicily, knowing that Polixenes will follow. This is a marriage that can bring new life, new order. Purity that was lost is recovered. This act provides the transition needed from the derangement, despair and death of the first thee acts and sets the stage for the reunions and miracle of the last.
The final act of the play takes place back in Sicily, where the story began. The anticipation of the reunion of the daughter to her father and the two kings does not happen on stage, but off stage. The reason is that it is impossible to have two climatic scenes at the same time. The second reunion will suffer. But this is not the highpoint of the play. In the chapel where the final scene takes place, is a beautiful, almost life like statue of a woman. It is Hermione, the presumed dead wife of King Leontes. She moves. She comes to life. She is resurrected. It is magical. This is the only time in all of Shakespeare’s works that he withholds information from the audience. We are stunned. And the purpose of this moment is to bring us as close to heaven as possible and the day when we will all be resurrected to life and reunited with those we love. Christ taught us what we need to know to attain salvation through stories, through parables. It is in our nature to listen and learn. We are created with this. Listen to the Master, trust and obey.
This final act sees action. It opens with the gravediggers talking about Ophelia and if she deserves a Christian burial due to the suspicion surrounding her death. Hamlet enters the graveyard and muses that all intelligence, wit, and action all comes to death, all comes to nothing. The universe is an accident. Life has no meaning. So why do anything in life if it all ends in the nothingness of death? Hamlet is exposing the nihilism of the modern age. Hamlet has sunk to his lowest. A funeral procession enters the graveyard. Hamlet learns that Ophelia has died. He is moved. Something stirs in him. He begins to come to his senses. He loved her. Remember too that Ophelia is the barometer of the mental state of Hamlet. Her innocence speaks to him even from the grave. Hamlet now has full charge of his senses; he knows what he must do. He must clean up the corruption in the court of Denmark. He must kill King Claudius who has killed his father, made a whore of his mother and taken his rightful crown from him. Hamlet is about to become a man of action. His life now has meaning.
Act One of Othello shows the whole world in disorder, and it all begins with a single decision. Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of Brabantio, falls in love with the black Moor Othello. They elope and marry. They do not seek the permission of the father, knowing that he will not allow it. This is the first critical mistake. This decision disrupts a household. This disruption spills onto the streets with near bloodshed, to the senate where the Duke is in need of the services of the mercenary Othello, and thus refuses to admit much less help solve the problem, and the disorder moves to the outside world. The second critical mistake of Othello and Desdemona is their denial of their physical bond to one another and thus deny the fact that they have now become one flesh. This is the very heart of this tragedy. This is a story of fragmentation, of not being whole, and the destruction it causes on individuals and the world. While the love of Othello and Desdemona is pure, it is flawed because of their decisions. Brabantio warns Othello that if his daughter can deceive her own father, she can certainly deceive her husband.
This superb lecture by Dr. White opens with a discussion of the definition and nature of tragedy and what precisely separates it from comedy. The fact is emphasized that the destruction taking place in tragedy must not be meaningless, but must serve a purpose. Dr. White discusses King Lear’s tragic flaw, the prominent theme of fallen man, and the unusual format Shakespeare chose, giving the play five acts of falling action instead of having the climax near the end of the play, as is customary. Also covered is the double plot of King Lear, the play’s presentation of the destruction of language by overuse and twisting of meanings, and the parallel between the situation in King Lear and the situation in the Church today: in both conditions, those who are disobedient (Kent and Cordelia in the play) are the ones who are truly caring and trying to preserve what is good.
