The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare Page A

at least in our imaginations.
    Cooke: I guess I wasn’t really interested in the “why” but the “what.” It seems to me that the play is not really about why Leontes has become the way he has. It’s about irrational behavior and the disastrous consequences of that behavior, especially in powerful people. So, for me, backstory was really only important inasmuch as it supported the actor in playing the present moment action. I’d read alot in preparation and we had a psychoanalyst come into rehearsal to talk about Leontes’ jealousy—both jealousy of Polixenes taking his wife away but also a homoerotic jealousy; that in some ways his wife was taking his potential lover away. These notions are really interesting but I don’t know how relevant they are. The cause of Leontes’ breakdown is not fully explored by Shakespeare and in some ways, I believe, it is as random as the appearance of the bear in the play. These events have a spiritual logic—they bring about a journey that the characters need to go on. Their cause is almost divine, rather than rooted in a literal world.
    How important for you was the pagan, classical setting—the consultation of the oracle, the thunderbolt that seems to come from Jupiter?
    Noble: I wouldn’t say it was pagan. I would say that was part of the mystery of it. I would absolutely say it is sacred. It’s numinous; it’s the acceptance that there is mystery in our lives. If you have a faith then there is the possibility of some sort of invisible but ubiquitous force for good. It is interesting that Paulina says at the end, “It is required / You do awake your faith.” I’ve done the play twice and, actually, I’ve done it all over the world—the tour went all over England and then to Warsaw and Krakw; my other
Winter’s Tale
went all over Europe, the Far East, and to New York and Washington—and I’ve seen this extraordinary thing happen every single night. The audience know that there’s a trick to it, but they remain profoundly moved by the transformation of the statue. One could say that Christianity is a metaphor; the fallen man, the crucifixion of Christ, the twelve disciples. But metaphor works on the human imagination in a very particular way. That scene is a metaphor, and we know it’s a metaphor, but it touches us in a very mysterious and
very
potent way. It almost never fails to work. Shakespeare has set us up in using means that are in a way purely man-made, but there are visions that are sacred and things that happen beyond the material. They are of the numinous variety. It’s not just a pagan play, it’s a secular play, and it has another dimension, a holy dimension.
    Gaines: There is a deep and abiding spirituality in this play but, no, the pagan, classical setting did not influence our production in any literal sense. These pagan gods certainly have more power than this king because, ultimately, it’s in the spirit world that judges him, and Leontes loses sight of that. In rejecting the spirit world, his hubris must be tamed, he must be brought to his knees. His dear son dies, his queen dies, and his life is left in a pile of rubble. Consulting the oracle is a metaphor for making contact with our universal conscience. Spirituality for me exists beyond a single religion. I think these last plays dwell in this other realm. Spiritual guidance and influence run throughout them—here in
The Winter’s Tale
, in
Pericles
, certainly in
Cymbeline
, and in
The Tempest.
These stories are elevated beyond the rules or the traditions of any single religion. They embody a reverence for life.
    Cooke: It’s important in that the play is mythic. It’s not a literal world. It’s full of psychological and emotional truth but it is conscious of itself, like the other late Shakespeare plays, as a story. It’s truthful but not literal. Its connection with the classical