The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

  Gaines: The stage was very dimly lit, almost black. You hardly saw anything but what you thought you saw was terrifying. A huge, white polar bear, perhaps eight feet tall with a ferocious face and tremendous teeth, ran toward the audience on that deep thrust stage--a slathering, drooling beast coming straight at you as it ran up the center aisle. It was so quick and the sound so overpowering and the scream of Antigonus so terrifying, that all together in this brief moment, it was shocking. Then there was a quick blackout and we saw Antigonus' blood on the white carpet. We cared for him, and so that spot of blood was devastating.

  Cooke: We had a very scary, life-size bear and it came through the audience. We tried to make it as real as possible and not send it up. I think that all these late Shakespeare plays work best when you commit to the here and now of what is happening and make that as real and as truthful as you possibly can, not comment or send it up. As Shakespeare's career develops it seems to me he writes more from a place of the unconscious. There is a mythic, poetic, divine, spiritual logic to the late plays. They're not really naturalistic plays. I think it also comes from a lifetime of having worked in the theater and understanding what an audience will accept, and how far they will go imaginatively when a play has an emotional logic. The last scene of Cymbeline played truthfully is very powerful, yet on the page you think it's faintly ridiculous! I think that comes from a lifetime of being an actor and writer and understanding that if an event is truthful and real, and by that I don't mean naturalistic, an audience will accept it. It's almost as if the play conjures up a bear at this point and we delivered one that was as real as possible. We also made it clear that Antigonus lured the bear away from the child--almost offering himself as a sacrifice for having exiled and abandoned the child.

  One of the distinctive features of the play is the sixteen-year gap between the end of Act 3 and the beginning of Act 4. What consequences did that have for your production?

  Noble: The first thing is that you have got to tell the story of what has happened. I think one of the wonderful things about the play and one of the reasons it engages an audience in an almost unique way is that it's partly about getting a second chance. It's a notion that chimes in so many ways with people. Leontes does these terrible, terrible things but he gets a second chance; that's why it's so moving. It must be like running over a child. It's out of your control. You know you shouldn't have done it; you shouldn't have gone out, or you shouldn't have stayed that long in the caf or whatever. You can't go back and change it but you can have a second chance, but it requires a huge amount of time.

  You have to punctuate the play in a very profound way, not just through the character of Time, the Chorus--which you've just got to do well, in a nice, imaginative way that will entertain. Funnily enough, it is the next scene that helps you do that more than anything--the scene between Polixenes and Camillo. Get two great actors and give them a nice little scene to do and you can tell that story. Then you get this extraordinary setting of Bohemia and these folk who are completely different to anybody we've seen before. Act 4 Scene 4 is one of the most creative and fertile bits of writing or dramaturgy in the whole of the canon. In that scene Shakespeare invented what in the twentieth century we call musical comedy, the form which has dominated the American stage for seventy or eighty years: the form in which there's a book and music or song, there's a story, usually a principal love story, often a clash of the generations, and usually a subplot with a song as well. The songs are there partly to create an atmosphere and a world, and also to advance the narrative; the state of the play is different at the end of the song than it was at the beginning, the story has progressed. It's quintessential Rodgers and Hammerstein. That is the template for modern musical theater. Coming out of the sixteen-year gap for Shakespeare was probably the most creative thing he could have done! He invents a new form, it's absolutely amazing! That's why some people can't really cope. They can't quite get it and want to cut chunks of it. But look at it for what it is and it's Carousel. It's an absolutely phenomenal piece of writing.

  Gaines: Sicilia was set in 1906, so when we returned sixteen years later to the court, it was 1922. One of the primary reasons for choosing this period was that clothing had so radically changed, helping the audience understand the gulf of time that had passed between one act and another. The corseted bodices and big bustles of the Edwardian period had given way to the natural, unconstricted, and shorter silhouettes of the twenties.

  Also in this same period a seismic shift in our worldview occurred. Between 1906 and 1922, the worst war humanity ever perpetrated invaded our consciousness. Man's inhumanity to man was unleashed--on a world scale mirroring Leontes' loss of all restraint on a personal, intimate scale--outrageous, unrestricted rage that can destroy a family or a continent. I wanted that heaviness and that weight to be inside these people. The historical significance of a world war in the intervening years is powerful, reflecting the cataclysmic changes that can happen in the span of just sixteen years. The war became an outward manifestation of the interior and personal war inflicted by Leontes' madness.

  Is there a danger of all that jollification at the sheep-shearing feast turning into a sentimental idealization of the pastoral life, in contrast to the machinations of the court?

  Cooke: I don't think so. If you really read it closely I think it's very rooted in the reality of rural life. Also, the rural world may have its humor and romance but it's shot through with pain, loss, and darkness. The scene starts with a serious argument between Florizel and Perdita about the doomed future of their relationship; it features a moment where a father disowns a son and another a daughter and Autolycus spends most of the scene ripping people off and mocking the locals. Even Mopsa and Dorcas' song is full of sexual jealousy.

  It's the minor notes that need to be served in realizing the scene. Even the dances have their significance in terms of fertility and the cycles of nature. I don't think Shakespeare has any sentimental notions about nature--the country can be a frightening place, as well as a beautiful one. This duality is there in many other of his plays: As You Like It, for example.

  What was your take on Autolycus: lovable rogue or something more sinister?

  Noble: He's out to make a buck, really, I don't think he's any more sinister than that. He tries to manipulate people and he's caught out, and the people whom he would regard as unsophisticated in fact get the better of him in the end--the Clown and the Old Shepherd.

  Gaines: I think he's the most charming thief, but he is a criminal--he steals things that are precious to people. But it just goes to show that if you can make us laugh, you can get away with just about anything! On the other hand, if he stole a locket that my grandmother gave me, I'd want to strangle him. As far as we know, Autolycus is the worst thing Bohemia has going, and when you juxtapose his crimes to Sicilia's, they're obviously not in the same ballpark. If you took Autolycus and made him a miserable bastard, you'd be committing an artistic "crime" yourself because he's so full of the joy of life. He's one of the cleverest petty villains in Shakespeare. So does he belong in jail? Yes, but just keep letting him out long enough to keep us laughing.

  Cooke: I really learned a lot about him through doing that production. If ever I do it again I'll start from a different place. He's not really a lovable rogue. He's funny, but I think he's a damaged outsider who wants to get his revenge on the world for having rejected him. He's a watchful, cunning wolf. The more I learned about him the more I understood that actually there is an amazingly amoral self-interest at work in that character. Sure, there's humor, but like Perdita, Hermione, and, to an extent, Florizel, he's displaced.

  How did you stage the moment where the "statue" of Hermione is revived?

  Noble: When I did the promenade production it was done right smack in the middle of the audience, with seven hundred people standing up, crowding around it. They were literally within two feet of it, so could see it from all angles. That meant we were the witnesses. We were the people who w
ere required to awaken our faith. We were put on the spot by Paulina. When you do it inside a proscenium arch it seems to me that the people watching should be the focus, not the statue. I did a clever thing where I got the statue on stage without anybody knowing it was on; suddenly she was there but with her back to us. She was right downstage on the lip of the stage and in a semicircle around her were the witnesses who were watching her. So the light was on their faces watching her. Therefore we got the energy through them, through their faces, their belief. It was interesting because it worked either way.

  Gaines: A thrust stage is a lot less forgiving in staging a scene like this one. I wanted the moment to be thrilling and I wanted it to be heartbreaking: someone we have loved and lost forever comes back to life. What is more miraculous than that?--but there's such heartache between them. In that moment, I wanted us to remember the sorrow and feel the joy.

  On our deep thrust stage, the simple, three-step pedestal was positioned downstage of the proscenium arch, and so the statue was within a few feet of many. Paulina moved aside a curtain to reveal her statue. The skin color was the same tone as the "stone" of Hermione's simple, classically draped dress--a pale, off-white color--and skin and dress all looked like one piece. The lighting washed the entire statue in a cool, blue light, and as Hermione came to life, the figure was transformed to a soft, warm amber. As you watched the rose color return to her cheeks, you actually felt life being breathed into this statue. I remember so often people leaning forward in their seats as the statue would begin to move. The moment was accompanied by the music of a single oboe. It was a moment of grace and of forgiveness. It begs the question: how much are we willing to forgive a great harm and injustice?

  Cooke: Following our logic of communal events it became like the end of a party, so that the audience were involved in it. That made it in a way cyclical, because our production began with a New Year's Eve party. We tried as much as possible to play off the reactions of the court rather than the statue. I have to say that I was a bit inspired in that by Adrian Noble's production. I knew that production quite well because it was on at the RSC when I was an Assistant Director there. I didn't work on it but I loved it and saw it lots of times and I thought it was a stroke of genius the way he staged that scene, because of course it's not about what she's feeling, it's about what everyone else is feeling in relation to her. It's their rebirth, especially Leontes', that we're witnessing, as much as hers. We had to fly in Kate [Fleetwood], who was playing Hermione, onto this platform, hidden behind a canopy. When she was revealed the audience were watching her back and observing the reactions of Leontes and the royal family, as well as all of the courtiers who'd been there at the first scene. It was very moving to see them all sixteen years older. It was very difficult to achieve and took quite a few previews before we could get it right. She was in a very iridescent, pearl-gray dress that caught the light. So we played it off a lot of the reactions of the courtiers, and Leontes.

  It may well be that the boy actor who played Mamillius in Shakespeare's original production doubled as Perdita, giving an extra layer of meaning to the idea of the lost child being found. But can the finding of Perdita ever really compensate for the loss of Mamillius?

  Noble: That isn't a question about drama, it's a question about the nature of grief and loss. Inside the play I think he gives us a pretty accurate and insightful portrait of grief. Parents should not bury their children. It should not happen. It's an abomination, and the grief will never ever go away. I don't think Shakespeare says it ever does go away. But he does give you a miracle. There's no question at all that the saving of Perdita is a miracle. Her life is saved through divine intervention. That bear should eat that baby. On both occasions I've done it I've made that very clear. I've had the bear sniffing around the baby, pawing the baby, looking at the baby and not killing the baby. Someone is looking after her. So the weight of emotion you get when Perdita is reunited with her father and then her mother is overwhelming. I think Shakespeare gives you that, but you can't take grief away. It's not a set of scales that balance out.

  Gaines: In no sense can Mamillius be replaced by Perdita. No child is replaced by another. Also, I wanted to cast the boy younger, eight or nine years old--much younger than Perdita at age sixteen. The younger he is, the more innocent he is, the more moving his lines, and the more horrific his death. He's an extraordinary child--a storyteller--and the world is less rich without him.

  Cooke: No. I've seen it done like that and it can really work. If you have male actors or, as they would have been, boy actors, I think it works because there is always a fascinating duality when a young man is playing a woman. But I think a woman in her early twenties playing a little boy is potentially a very painful thing. I can't abide adults playing children; it always seems fake and theatrical in a cod way, so we didn't go down that path.

  I don't think the finding of Perdita can compensate for the loss of Mamillius. There's a strong sense of loss as well as joy at the end of the play, which is one of the reasons why it's the greatest ending of any play, ever. It's shot through with melancholy. There's a strong sense, when Leontes sees the statue before it comes to life, that his grief for Hermione is still alive and that there's a part of him that will never recover. You feel that when the play is done honestly. Although there's this redemptive ending, a rebirth, or at the very least, a second chance, there's also a strong sense that damage has been done that cannot be compensated for. It's a very bittersweet ending.

  What about the moment at the end when Camillo is married off to Paulina? It often gets a laugh in the theater, but maybe there's a rightness about it, since they are both such good people?

  Noble: I think you'd have to have a very dull production for it not to get a laugh. If you don't get a laugh on that you're in real trouble! Because you like them both so much and so it's fabulous. It's one of those lovely things that happen. If the audience don't laugh at that it's because they weren't moved by the reconciliation before; it's partly relief, so you've got to get a laugh there otherwise you're in real trouble. It's like a tap.

  Gaines: I wouldn't deny that laugh for anything in the world. It leaves us happy. "O, peace, Paulina!" That's why they laugh--Leontes tells her to shut up! Of course you can play it many ways, but we need to laugh. Frankly, we deserve to laugh. What's better than a good belly laugh as two old friends get married? The theatricality of these last moments is brilliant. It's yet another kind of rebirth, and in this, too, we see the threads connecting this play to his other late plays, which end in reunion, forgiveness, and rebirth. But, personally, if I were Paulina, I'd be annoyed to death ...

  Cooke: They're both highly skilled political animals as well, so there's a good match in that respect. One of the things I discovered about Camillo through doing the play is what a consummate politician he is. I think Paulina is as well, in her own way. Not that she is politic in a Machiavellian, sly way; she's very impassioned and direct, but nonetheless she's a skilled rhetorician. I think Shakespeare is often conservative in his view of youth: it's often the older characters that he really values the most. In All's Well That Ends Well it's characters like Lafew and the Countess that make the soundest judgment and the young ones, Bertram and Helen, that are impulsive and narcissistic. Young people follow their hearts, and following your heart is not always the best way to respond to the world, especially if you're in a powerful family. There's a kind of harmony in Camillo's betrothal to Paulina, and an audience enjoys the tying up of ends at the close of a play. In this respect, Shakespeare plays, especially in these late works, with convention. He plays with the conventional happy ending in a very knowing way. Again, Cymbeline is a really interesting point of comparison, where everything is resolved to a ridiculous degree as in a fairy tale; he's playing with an audience's hopes and expectations and acknowledging that in some ways every story is generic, but at the same time he's committing to the emotional reality of the play. There's huge pleasure for an audience in that.


  9. Autolycus the con man: Richard Katz in Dominic Cooke's 2006 production.

  SHAKESPEARE'S CAREER

  IN THE THEATER

  BEGINNINGS

  William Shakespeare was an extraordinarily intelligent man who was born and died in an ordinary market town in the English Midlands. He lived an uneventful life in an eventful age. Born in April 1564, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a glove maker who was prominent on the town council until he fell into financial difficulties. Young William was educated at the local grammar in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, where he gained a thorough grounding in the Latin language, the art of rhetoric, and classical poetry. He married Ann Hathaway and had three children (Susanna, then the twins Hamnet and Judith) before his twenty-first birthday: an exceptionally young age for the period. We do not know how he supported his family in the mid-1580s.

  Like many clever country boys, he moved to the city in order to make his way in the world. Like many creative people, he found a career in the entertainment business. Public playhouses and professional full-time acting companies reliant on the market for their income were born in Shakespeare's childhood. When he arrived in London as a man, sometime in the late 1580s, a new phenomenon was in the making: the actor who is so successful that he becomes a "star." The word did not exist in its modern sense, but the pattern is recognizable: audiences went to the theater not so much to see a particular show as to witness the comedian Richard Tarlton or the dramatic actor Edward Alleyn.