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 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.
The last four plays of Shakespeare’s career are his romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale.) In these plays he sums up all he has learned about life and his craft. They are filled with religious notions that his Catholic audience will recognize. He is sending them a message of hope. These plays too are a unique blend of comedy and tragedy. All drama is based in conflict. The conflict in comedy deals with individual desires verses the social norm. In the end a comprise is made and all parties are satisfied. The conflict in tragedy is an individual who challenges the metaphysical and gets crushed in the process. Wisdom is the fruit of this suffering. In the romantic plays there are no gigantic characters like Macbeth or Othello; rather the plot drives the play. There are no external forces to tempt the main character to do wrong; they just do it. The natural and supernatural (fantasy) is woven throughout to help move the plot along. In The Winter’s Tale the king without reason accuses his best friend and faithful wife of infidelity. He decides what is real and what is not: the very principle of Protestantism.
This masterful exposition by Dr. White of The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare’s most controversial comedies, shows the deep truths and lessons to be found in the three caskets of gold, silver, and lead which decide Portia’s husband; and the significant personalities of the men who choose each one. Dr. White shows that Portia’s father was not cruel in imposing this test on his daughter’s suitors, but, on the contrary, very wise indeed. Also covered is Shakespeare’s masterful weaving together of a total of three different, intertwining plots along with useful commentary on the nature of comedy itself. Dr. White discusses the stark differences between Shakespeare’s money-centered Venice and the music-filled fairytale of Belmont, where Portia resides, emphasizing that the women and men are unhappy because they are separated, and are meant to be together in families and society.
Concluding Part Two of his commentary on Macbeth, Dr. White continues his discussion of the poetic meter of the play’s most famous passage: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” He describes it as a perfect example of meaning and sound coming together in a literary work and attributes it to Shakespeare’s genius; and makes reference to the same device being used in other of the poet’s plays such as Hamlet and Anthony and Cleopatra. An amazing exhibition, White says, coming from a writer with only an eighth-grade education.
In this first part of his second session on Macbeth, Dr. White discusses the legends and myths that have surrounded the play throughout the theater world. To many, Macbeth was not just a Scottish tragedy but a curse. White admits to not teaching this play as often as the other Shakespeare tragedies because of it darkness and association with evil. Then he segues into the “poetry” of the play and a detailed explanation of the meter of its most famous passage.
