Play: The Winter’s Tale
by William Shakespeare
Time and Place: Pseudo-Classical Sicilia and Pastoral Bohemia. That
is to say, not anything historically accurate, but more along the lines of the
way in which Renaissance and Baroque artists imagined the Classical past. The play itself is something of a
fairytale, and so the setting should reflect this fanciful nature. Picture
something out of a painting by Titian or Claude Lorrain: the ruins are already
artfully ruinous, the women are dressed in bright colors and draped decoratively
over scenery, the wilds are lush and nonthreatening. Sicilia appears the way
that Ancient Greece often does in television shows more interested in spectacle
than realism. It is the sort of place Ovid imagined when he spoke of the Golden
Age. Its idyllic civility makes the sudden turn into chaos brought on by
Leontes’s madness all the more shocking. Bohemia, too, is a place out of myth,
but more along the lines of Arcadia than Olympus.
Staging:
A relatively small, proscenium stage seems
best for The Winter’s Tale. The play
is largely about secrets and revelation, and so forcing characters into closer
proximity cranks up the tension. There should be room enough for characters to
pace and to dance, but as little unused space as possible. The main stage is
used for those scenes set in the palace of Sicilia and the forest of Bohemia,
as these are the two central locations for the play. A curtain can be drawn
across in front of the set for all other scenes. A great deal of the setting,
mood, and passage of time will be conveyed not through set but through
lighting. The main stage set for the two locations is blocked out much the same.
Sicilia’s
palace consists of twelve columns made up to look like marble, standing in a
semi-circle. Black painted flats form a semi-circular back wall, two or three
feet behind the columns. There is an elevated platform—three feet high or
so—between the two central columns, against this backdrop. This serves
variously throughout the play, including as a sort of coffee table for hand
props such as food and drinks during Act I Scene II, the place where Antigonus
leaves the infant Perdita in Act III Scene III, and the dais on which Hermione
stands during the pivotal statue scene in Act V Scene III. Characters enter and
exit downstage right and left, between the downstage columns and the curtain. The
rest of the space between the columns and backdrop can be used by characters
who are onstage but meant to remain unobtrusive for large parts of the scene,
such as when Camillo acts as cupbearer in Act I Scene II. Three plush chairs
should be arranged upstage center, in front of the platform, where Leontes,
Polixenes, and Hermione begin Act I Scene II seated.
The
set for Bohemia’s forest is oriented in exactly the same way, though the
columns are replaced by flowering trees and the chairs are replaced by a large
rock upon which Perdita is sitting at the top of Act IV Scene IV, to align her
with the infant who is last seen on the platform immediately behind the rock.
As for that infant, the prop doesn’t need to be anything more than a bundle of blankets.
Sound effects will be much more convincing than any sort of doll. The light in
the forest is dappled and multicolored, almost like a stained glass window,
with gobos used to project the shape of branches onto the back wall.
Characters:
Hermione
is, perhaps, the most important role in this production. The actress should
look relatively young, but not nearly as young as the actress cast to play
Perdita. She is a woman in her prime—self-possessed and regal—not a fanciful
girl. That is not to say, however than she is in any way cold. On the contrary,
Hermione in the opening act should exude warmth and good cheer. She is a
genuinely kind woman who enjoys life and cares for the people around her. Hermione
is charming, both to the audience and the characters around her. It is this
charm that engender loyalty in characters like Camillo and Paulina. It is also this charm that leads her insecure
husband into maddening jealousy when he misinterprets her friendly affection
for Polixenes as sign of an elicit romance. The audience, however, should be
able to see Hermione’s clear devotion to her husband and son. They have to care
about her, otherwise her “death” and resurrection have no real impact.
Leontes
too, has to carry much of the weight of this play. He cannot be entirely
loathsome. We have to feel at least a little bit bad for him in his grief, if
only so that we can be happy for Perdita and Hermione when they are able to
reunite with him. However, he should be at least somewhat irritating in the
first scene. He talks too loudly and gestures to widely. His charm is forced,
where Hermione’s is natural. Though he is a man in his middle age, he still has
something of a frat boy aura about him. He’s the sort of man you enjoy at
parties but roll your eyes at when he overstays his welcome. This immature,
somewhat insecure persona sets the stage for his turn to sudden turn to
jealousy and rage at the end of Act I. He sees Hermione’s ease with Polixenes
and assumes that his beautiful, charming wife has cuckolded him, not because
she has actually done anything to warrant such an assumption, but because he
cannot stand to see her succeed where he failed in convincing his friend to
stay, and because he cannot bear to see her attention on anyone else.
Key Scenes:
As
this production is largely built around Hermione and her journey, the three
scenes I’ve chosen to focus on also revolve around her. The first is Act I
Scene II, in which we should see Hermione, Polixenes, and Leontes begin the
play as easy friends, sitting in the chairs of the palace set and drinking,
laughing, and talking. Hermione and Leontes sit to either side of their friend,
signaling the breach between them he will soon become. Her hair is down, with
flowers woven through it, both to show her vitality and to align her with Perdita,
who is compared to flowers later in the play. She draws Polixenes out of his
chair and coaxes him to stay with them for a while longer, taking up space on
the stage with ease and grace. This is then contrasted with Leontes, who paces
and gesticulates wildly as he monologues to Camillo about Hermione’s supposed
infidelity. When Camillo is eventually left alone onstage, he slumps into
Polixenes’s vacated chair and addresses much of his soliloquy to Hermione’s
seat, as an expression of his sympathy for her.
The
next vital scene is Act I Scene II, in which Hermione first hears Leontes’s accusations.
Mamillius is plucking the flowers from her hair as she carries him onstage at
the top of the act, foreshadowing her own fall. Here is the first time we see
her shift from the warmth she shows at the play’s start. She does not yet become
cold when first accused, but she does stand straighter. We get a glimpse in
this scene of the iron-hard queen behind her playful nature.
This
is then doubled down upon in the court scene in Act III Scene I. The flowers
are gone from Hermione’s hair, and it is bound up, though raggedly, to signify
her imprisonment. She has put off the bright colors she wore at the start and
now wears drab brown or grey. Leontes’s rage has been hot and fast and unpredictable
up to this point, but here we finally see Hermione’s anger. She is glacial and
still, fixing both characters and audience with her furious gaze. She does not
yell, though her husband does. Instead, she is the quietest we have yet seen
her, but forceful. Though Hermione is often portrayed as despairing and
pleading in this scene, in this production she should be furious. Her children
have been stolen from her, one of them presumably to be murdered, and her
reputation has been destroyed. The only moment we see the grief beneath the
rage is in her aside about her father at line 127. She holds herself rigid and aloof,
almost taunting Leontes, driving him to greater and greater fits of insecure fury
until he defies the oracle. Hermione—and indeed all the characters onstage—cannot
hide her shock at this, and when the messenger announces Mamillius’s death it
is finally too much, and she collapses. Confronted with the consequences of his
actions, Leontes deflates, going quiet and shrinking in on himself.
Hermione’s
final transformation is in the play’s final scene. A curtain has been drawn
upon the dais upstage and stairs now lead down from it. When Paulina draws the curtain,
we see Hermione, head down, lit from directly above so as to cast her face in
shadow. Though she was still in the trial scene, she is now even more so,
standing relaxed but cold as stone. She wears heavy, white robes and her hair
is up neatly. It has been dusted with powder, both to give the appearance of
age and to make her seem more like the marble she is pretending to be. She
raises her head when Paulina bids her to move, and Leontes promptly falls to
his knees, hiding his face until she descends the dais to stand before him and
take his hand, like a benediction. When she speaks to Perdita, she does so
slowly, as if she were still half statue. She should dwarf the other characters
on the stage, save for Paulina.
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