Rituals in “A Winter’s Tale”

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Rituals of A Winter’s Tale

In William Shakespeare’s play, A Winter’s Tale, several different rituals and rites of passages can be seen. They may be seen in different ways. They may be seen in way of marriage, weddings, birth, and death. These rites of passages can be seen throughout A Winter’s Tale.

According to Arnold Van Gennep, a French ethnographer and folklorist, in order for there to be a rite of passage, there had to be some sort of transition. According to his theory, there are three steps that people needs to go throw in order to see a rite of passage. There had to be separation, liminality or transitional phase, and re-integration. This usually seems to be the process of a ritual.

In the play, the audience can see that the presence of a married couple. The married couple seen is Leontes and Hermione, King of Sicilia and his wife, the Queen. When the play opens, the royal couple seems to have a reasonably good relationship. However, all this quickly changes. In Act 1 Scene 2, after their conversation with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, the audience may see a separation between the two. They don’t appear as united.

Then comes Hermione’s trial, where Leontes has accused her of adultery. Leontes is sure of the evidence of her adultery that he has collected. Hermione, on the hand, denies it, as nothing of his accusations is true.

For sixteen years, they are separated from each other. Neither of them see each other during this time. They only see each other at the very end of the play, when Paulina reveals Hermione, who has now become a statue. It is at this point that the King and Queen are finally reunited with each other. This is the moment of re-integration for Leontes and Hermione, especially for the latter, who had not been seen for sixteen years.

In this play, there is another rite of passage, which can be seen. Weddings are also a part of both the play and rites of passage.

Paulina must also go throw rites of passage throughout A Winter’s Tale. At the beginning of the play, she is married to Antigonus, a Lord in Leontes’ court. Unlike couples of this time, when the man would dominate the marriage and family, Paulina is the one who dominates their marriage, who is the “head”, so to speak. They are separated from other couples and from each other in a way.

In Act 3 Scene 3, Antigonus arrives in Bohemia with Leontes and Hermione’s daughter. However, sadly, he is attacked by a bear and dies in Bohemia. He never returns to Sicillia and to Paulina. This could be considered as a transitional point for Paulina, as the beginning of the liminality for her.

Paulina will stay in this liminal phase until the very end of the play, until Leontes’ last speech, the very last speech of the play. He tells Paulina that she should get herself a husband and he then suggests that she should marry Camillo. He gives Paulina his blessing to remarry. In a way, this is Leonte’s way of thanking her for all the advice that she has given him. This is really the moment when Paulina re-integrates the community, her society. This is Paulina’s rite of passage, what she goes through in order to get accepted in Leontes’ court.

Another couple, who must go through this rite of passage, is Perdita, Leontes’ and Hermione’s lost daughter, and Florizel, Polixenes’ son and Prince of Bohemia. They first meet in Act Four Scene 4. The pair falls in love almost immediately. At this time, no one really knows Perdita’s true identity. After Perdita’s adoptive father, the Shepherd comes out with a few guests, Florizel asks him for permission to court Perdita. He is more than willing to give it to him.

However, unbeknownst to anyone of them, Florizel’s father is one of the guests, underdisguised. He asks the Prince why not ask the permission of his father. However, Florizel does not think that his father should known. Afterwards, Polixenes reveals himself and does not give his permission for them to be together. The King threatens his son that he will be disinherited if he were to ever speak to Perdita again. However, Florizel refuses to break his oath to Perdita, but he follows his father all the same. By this point, they are at the point of transition.

The Shepherd and Perdita are both very angry with Florizel for disappointing them and not revealing his true identity. However, two of their guests advise the Shepherd to reveal how he really came to have Perdita as a daughter, which he does. In the end, Polixenes, Florizel, Camillo, and Perdita all head for Sicillia and it is revealed that Perdita is in fact the daughter of Leontes and Hermione, heir to the throne of Sicillia. It only at this point that Polixenes gives his consent. Leontes, as well, allows the two to marry. Florizel and Perdita are then reunited and about to marry.

Although the wedding is not seen, we can imagine that the liminal point ends at the end of the ceremony. Afterwards, they enter the period of re-integration. They will re-enter their society as a married couple.

Another type of passage seen in A Winter’s Tale is birth. There is only one birth, which occurs during the play. And that is the birth of Perdita. Hermione gave birth to Perdita when she was prison. However, in this play, there would seem that certain traditions of the time were overlooked with regards to the birth of Perdita. At her trial, Hermione explains that she was denied what was called the “child-bed privilege”. The child-bed privilege is when the mother can rest for a month, after giving childbirth, before re-entering society. And this rule would apply to women of all status, or “To women of all fashion”, as Hermione states at her trial. (l.101, Act 3, Scene 2) She did have her month of rest, which Hermione could have chosen to have. But she wasn’t given the opportunity to make this choice. This rite of passage was not fully completed, for Hermione.

The final rite of passage, which can be seen in A Winter’s Tale, is death. This is a subject quite present in several of Shakespeare’s plays, as it would a topic all to familiar to the play’s audience of the time. The first deaths that can be seen by the audience with regards to A Winter’s Tale are those of Mamillius and the supposed death of Hermione. This occurs during Hermione’s trial, in Act 3, Scene 2. Mamillius feel ill upon hearing of his mother’s arrest. However, durint her trial, a servant arrives to give the King and Queen the news of their sons’s death.

Upon hearing of this news, the Queen faints and Paulina and the Hermione’s ladies brings out of the room. A moment or two later, Paulina re-enters to give the news of Hermione’s death. However, at the end of the play, the audience realizes that Hermione didn’t really die upon hearing of her son’s death. However, we aren’t really sure what happened to her or what she did for sixteen years.

A third and final death occurs, during the play. And this death is that of Antigonus, Paulina’s husband, which occurs in Act 3, Scene 3. In this scene, he is in Bohemia with Hermione’s newborn child, Perdita. Leontes ordered Antigonus to bring the child to some remote place and leave it there to die. He is in Bohemia, laying the child on the ground, and it is there that he meets with a bear. The audience is then told that the bear ate Antigonus. It is fairly clear that he is dead, after it took place. The audience may understand it better, later on in the play, if they did not understand it at first.

These types of rites of passages can be seen in other Shakespearean plays, as well. These are simply a few examples of rites of passages that take place in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale.

Bibliography

Shakespeare, William. “A Winter’s Tale.” Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.