5. In The Winter's Tale, what ideas does Shakespeare present about parents and
children, and by what means?
Overview
Children are presented throughout The Winter’s Tale and from the very beginning in Act 1, we are
invited into the theme of childhood through the references to Polixenes and Leontes’ childhood and
then in Act 1 Scene 2, to the idea of Mamilius’ restorative power as a child (capable of creating
healing and making the day short). This is also foreshadowing of further healing processes which
children will enable.
Shakespeare enables a focus not only on children but also on the relationships they share with their
parents and their purpose respectively.
Mamilius, Florizel and Perdita are presented as possessing admirable, healthy qualities which
promise well for the future.
Their second function of course is to redeem the sins of their parents; they achieve reconciliation.
(Similar to Romeo and Juliet who died to rectify the conflict between their parents).
Don’t forget the relationships we see between them are made clear through structural divides and
the importance this places on their separation, their reunification and the resemblances noticed
between mother / daughter; father/ son.
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You need to make reference now to the Parents and children sheet.
Parents and children
Mothers and daughtersParents and sonsDifficult parent / child relationships
- Children are significant in their relationships with their parents in The Winter's Tale.
- More on parents and children in Shakespeare: The relationships between parents and children
feature at the centre of many, if not most, Shakespearean dramas. This is unsurprising given that this
is a crucial relationship for all human beings; but Shakespeare seems to find it more fascinating than
most playwrights.
- Even where no parents actually appear, they are important - it is her father's will which motivates
Portia in The Merchant of Venice, even though he is dead. In the same play, Jessica's relationship
with her father is a significant issue, as is Katherina and Bianca's with their father in The Taming of
the Shrew. Lear's relationship with his three daughters and the Duke of Gloucester's with his two
sons are the motivations of the parallel plots in King Lear.
Mothers and daughters
Interestingly, it is rare for Shakespeare to depict relationships between mothers and daughters in
The Winter's Tale:
, · Perdita is seen with her adoptive father, the Old Shepherd, who mentions (in Act IV, sc iv) ‘when
my old wife liv'd' – there is no longer a Mrs Shepherd
· As for Perdita and her real mother, we see only one scene – the very last in the play – where
Perdita meets Hermione. Even then, though asked to ‘pray your mother's blessing', Shakespeare
gives Perdita no words to say to her long-lost parent.
Parents and sons
However, the play shows both Hermione and Leontes enjoying a good-natured relationship with
their son. Even as his jealousy is growing (in I. ii.), Leontes speaks affectionately about, and to, his
boy:
‘How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder
bosoms! Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years, and
saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat …. How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend, Will you take eggs for money?
Hermione, too, though heavily pregnant and so tired that for a few moments (in Act II, sc i) that
Mamillius ‘troubles' her ‘past enduring', rapidly calls for him again:
‘Come, sir, now I am for you again: ‘pray you, sit by us, And tell's a tale.'
Difficult parent / child relationships
Nevertheless, often in The Winter's Tale we see or hear of the problems between the generations.
Youth and age have different views of what constitutes correct behaviour:
· The first words we hear from the Old Shepherd (in Act III, sc iii) remind us of this:
‘I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest;
for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing,
fighting - Hark you now! Would any but these boiled-brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt
this weather?
· Later, at the start of the sheep-shearing scene, the Old Shepherd chides Perdita for not matching
the hospitality of his late wife:
‘Fie, daughter! When my old wife liv'd, upon This day she was both pantler, butler, cook, Both
dame and servant; welcom'd all, serv'd all ... You are retir'd, As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting.'
· Later in the sheep-shearing scene, the disguised Polixenes challenges his son's decision to marry
without his father's permission; no son, he indicates, should contemplate such an act of filial
disobedience unless his father were senile:
‘Methinks a father Is at the nuptial of his son a guest That best becomes the table. Pray you once
more, Is not your father grown incapable Of reasonable affairs? … Reason my son Should chose
himself a wife, but as good reason The father (all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity )
should hold some counsel In such a business.'
