The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 21.0307 Friday, 23 July 2010
[1] From: David Evett <
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Date: July 20, 2010 6:22:44 PM EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0294 Hermione?
[2] From: Evelyn Gajowski <
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Date: July 20, 2010 7:49:35 PM EDT
Subj: RE: SHK 21.0294 Hermione
[3] From: Martin Mueller <
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Date: July 20, 2010 11:18:22 PM EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0294 Hermione?
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Evett <
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Date: July 20, 2010 6:22:44 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0294 Hermione?
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0294 Hermione?
Just in terms of theatrical efficacy, I want to join the "She hangs about
his neck" crowd, while remembering a memorable production at Stratford, ONT
(1986?) in which three splendid actors -- Goldie Semple as Hermione, Colm
Feore as Leontes, and Martha Henry as Paulina -- took that scene with
mesmerizing slowness, as though every word was being squeezed out in a
bubble of emotional tension so great that any false note might break it. The
giant main stage auditorium was full and rapt. When Hermione finally raised
her hand and then placed her arms around her neck it was like the flowing of
melted glass, until the two were locked in a long, still, silent embrace,
only finally broken by the whispered, "She hangs about his neck." The
fullness of the reunion was that complete and solid. It had been hard earned
by Feore's anguished repentance, which he spent mostly abased before his
confessor, Paulina -- and the interspersed joys and frustrations of the
courtship of Perdita and Florizel in a richly rustic Bohemia, whose own
union as described in the previous scene and only swiftly acknowledged in
the whirl of the final minute of this one would have been equally belied by
an equivocal treatment of her parents' reconciliation. I've seen a dozen
productions of the play; this one ranks among the two or three most moving
and satisfying of any of the hundreds of Shakespeare plays I've seen, on any
stage.
David Evett
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Evelyn Gajowski <
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Date: July 20, 2010 7:49:35 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0294 Hermione?
Comment: RE: SHK 21.0294 Hermione?
Dear SHAKSPER members,
I'd like once again to remind members that, in an earlier SHAKSPER
discussion of this question, Adrian Kiernander described the idea of the
reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes in the final scene of The Winter's
Tale as "a heterosexual male fantasy of forgiveness."
Evelyn Gajowski
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
[Editor's Note: I believe the discussion to which Evelyn refers is here
http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2009/0458.html. This is an appropriate time
to remind subscribers that the SHAKSPER fileserver is the home of the
archives of twenty-one years of discussions on this list as well as a wealth
of other information. If you have not visited it lately, you might play with
the search and browse functions to find something of interest to you. Also,
There will be a redesigned, modernized site in the future. -Hardy M. Cook]
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Mueller <
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Date: July 20, 2010 11:18:22 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0294 Hermione?
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0294 Hermione?
I like Dan Venning's observation that any play worth its salt contains
spaces that need to be filled out differently from one production to
another, with the text leaving a lot of leeway.
That said, explicit choices not made tell their own story. Leontes and
Hermione find each other (sort of) after sixteen years of penance diligently
supervised by the long-term psychotherapist Paulina -- shades of a story in
Bandello that Shakespeare had used in Much Ado. They conspicuously do not
fall into each other's arms, as do Odysseus and Penelope after twenty years.
There are deep echoes of the Pygmalion story -- the status come alive -- but
time leaves its marks. The relationship of mother and daughter seems to take
precedence over that of husband and wife -- a point both accentuated and
marred in a production many years ago where Judith Dench played both the
mother and the daughter. You sat there seeing the point of it but worrying a
little too much about how it was being done.
The leeway in the text has its limits: Leontes and Hermione living happily
ever after does not seem to be on the front burner of the author's
intentions. And that seems in keeping with the title, "A Winter's Tale." In
Greene's source story, Hermione really dies, and Leontes commits suicide,
overcome both by remorse about his way of relating both to this wife and his
daughter.
It's a little less gloomy in the Winter's Tale. But not as bright as in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, where it is also the case that a lot of bright
things come to confusion.
MM
I'd like to add a ps to my posting. Several people have drawn attention to
the implicit stage directions in the observations of people around Leontes
and Hermione. From this one might gather that they are like Odysseus and
Penelope and do indeed fall into each other's arms after many years.
On the other hand, the embrace of Odysseus and Penelope is the focus -- one
might almost say, the telos -- of the entire story, and it is followed by
some very explicit lines about how they make love and then tell each other
their stories. Hermione does not address her husband -- in this regard she
is like the Euripidean Alcestis, who almost certainly hovers in the
background of this story --. She does address her daughter.
As for the implicit stage directions about the couple's embrace, one could
argue that the reunion of husband and wife is beyond words and that we here
have a sort of ineffability topos. Perhaps. But the dramatist's focus seems
to be on mother and daughter. Will she say anything? What and to whom? These
are the questions that the audience is eager to have answered. And they are
answered when Hermione speaks to her daughter.
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