Silenced Masculine Authority

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

64

4.1 Silenced Masculine Authority

After the death of Mamillius, Leontes’ acknowledgement of his own mistake comes immediately: “Apollo’s angry, and the heavens themselves do strike at my injustice” (III. ii 147). The Sicilian king now comes to realize that the death of the heir is Apollo’s punishment for his wrongdoing. However, such tragic consequences do not stop here, for Hermione faints away at the news of Mamillius’ sudden death, and Leontes is now overwhelmed with guilt:

Take her hence;

Her heart is but o’ercharg’d; she will recover.

I have too much believ’d mine own suspicion.

Beseech you tenderly apply to her Some remedies for life. (III. ii. 149)

Unfortunately, although Leontes promises to “new woo” his queen, he could not save Hermione from dying upon the news of her son’s death. When Paulina

announces Hermione’s death, her anger and grief move her to call the king a tyrant:

“Thy tyranny / Together with the working of the jealousies / (Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle / For girls of nine), O, think what they have done, / And then run mad indeed--stark mad! for all / Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it”

(III. ii. 179-184). To Paulina, Leontes’ tyrannical deeds coincide with his jealous paranoia. She also refers to his jealousy as fancies, which symbolize that his suspicions regarding Hermione’s virtue and threat against his crown are merely

“phantasmatically imbued” (Alfar 171).

In contrast to the previous scenes when his absolute authority is at its highest

‧

in accusing his wife, now his pose of masculine authority is silenced, for it is that authority that is responsible for the ongoing chaos and the tragic consequences.

Therefore, Paulina can say with impunity that the crimes Leontes commits are

“heavier / than all your woes can stir; therefore betake thee / to nothing but despair.

A thousand knees, / Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, / Upon a barren mountain (III. ii. 208-210). Overwhelmed with a strong sense of grief and guilt, Leontes does not silence Paulina but rather encourage her in her castigation: “Go on, go on; thou canst not speak too much, I have deserved all tongues to talk their bitter’rest” (III. ii. 214-16). Indeed, the loss of his heir and wife provokes Leontes’

contrition, and Hermione’s death testifies to her innocence and underscores his own brutality and paranoia.

Despite Leontes’ agreement with Paulina’s sharp criticism, a Lord of the council chamber attempts to silence her: “Say no more; / Howe’er the business goes, you have made fault / I’ th’ boldness of your speech” (III. ii. 216-17). Many critics, as Huston Diehl has recently noted, have offered similar interpretations of her speech.⁸ Rather than taking a milder approach to the Lord’s rebuke, Paulina even goes so far as to forswear her role as Leontes’ counselor:

Do not receive affliction At my petition; I beseech you, rather Let me be punished, that have minded you Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege, Sir, royal sire, forgive a foolish woman.

8 In "'Does not the stone rebuke me?': The Pauline Rebuke and Paulina's Lawful Magic in The Winter's Tale," Huston Diehl notes “Paulina's vehement, biting, and relentless rebukes seem so assaultive that many scholars and readers today, like Sicily’s courtiers, find them excessive and distasteful, despite Paulina’s claims that her speaking is medicinal and intended to ‘do good’” (72).

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

66

The love I bore your queen--lo, fool again!

I'll speak of her no more, nor of your children. (III. ii. 224-29)

Paulina’s self-deprecation serves to mask her intentions and indicates that she wants Leontes to remember his sins and her conviction that she should assume this role.

Furthermore, her offer to “say nothing” pressures Leontes either to support or overrule the Lord. Here, Leontes’ masculine authority is notably silenced, and Paulina has symbolically taken over the role as an authority figure. Paulina’s new role of authority and outspokenness is a sharp contrast to Leontes’ silenced masculinity: she uses the greater male authority (in this case Leontes) as leverage against the King’s previous attempts to stifle and silence her.⁹ Now Leontes authorizes Paulina’s speech by saying, “Thou didst speak but well / When most the truth” (III. ii. 232). Likewise, she waits silently for Leontes to establish his

penitential regime and for him to command:

Once a day I’ll visit The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there Shall be my recreation. So long as nature Will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it, (III. ii. 238-42)

Before the curtain falls to end the first part of The Winter’s Tale, Leontes has changed from a paranoid tyrant who wrongly accused her wife of adultery to a guilt-stricken king who vows to be repentant for the rest of his life. Self-accused, he welcomes the power of Paulina’s strong voice to punish his tyranny and his mistake of letting his reason be overwhelmed by masculine anxiety.

9 On this perspective, see D.J. Enright, Shakespeare and the Students. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970) 182.

‧

The losses of Mamillius and Hermione and the appearance of the young lovers mark the end of one genre and the beginning of the other.¹⁰ The play’s shift from the tragedy in Leontes’ kingdom to the fertility of the pastoral landscape signals a revision of the forms of power. The sheep-sheering festival is a celebration of everything earth and fertile. Furthermore, the love between Florizel and Perdita brings positive light to the former destructiveness of love in the form of jealousy.

Florizel, son of Polixenes and heir to the throne of Bohemia, stands as a sharp contrast to Leontes as a lover. Florizel’s name suggests the union of male and female: “zell” is an archaic form of zeal, ardent love, and “Flora,” goddess of the springing flowers.

Florizel, in comparison with Leontes, is a remarkable lover. His courtship, unlike Leontes’ “crabbed” one, is joyous and confident (I. ii. 102). He rejoices at Perdita’s likeness to the goddess of flowers:

These your unusual weeds to each part of you Does give a life; no shepherdess, but Flora

Peering in April’s front. This your sheep-sheering Is as a meeting of the petty-gods,

And you the queen on’t.

(IV. iv. 1-5)

Unlike Leontes’ manic anxiety in the face of Hermione’s fertility, Florizel pays tribute to Perdita’s affinity with corporeal recreation. According to Cristina Leon Alfar, Florizel’s embrace of everything procreative signifies “a breakdown in the patrilineal dread of the unknowable, uncontrollable Feminine” (171). Instead of

10 Several critics have noted the shift in The Winter’s Tale from tragedy to romance. See Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 193-238; Gourley, “‘O, my most sacred lady,’”258-79; and Ronk, “Recasting Jealousy,” 50-77.