Seasons and Flowers in The Winter's Tale

Abstract

FTER centuries of comparative neglect by critics The Winter's gA99) Tale has luckily been found congenial to the twentieth-century sensibility. Modern writers have seen rich intellectual issues in the play: Wilson Knight the concept of nature, S. L. Bethell the theological issue of grace and the themes of country and court, Derek Traversi the movement toward penitence and grace, and F. David Hoeniger the notions of rebirth and fertility implied in the seasonal motif.1 This last approach in particular fits quite well with the play's title. But the reader of Mr. Hoeniger's penetrating article may justly wonder what Shakespeare's play was like before The Golden Bough was written; on that account it is worth re-examining the seasonal and floral motifs of the play from a pre-Frazerian viewpoint to see what Shakespeare's contemporaries would have made of a tale about winter and spring garnished with a pastoral bouquet. The Renaissance needed to look no further back than the Middle Ages for lore concerning the seasons. To gain an idea of this surviving medieval tradition we can turn to a work which Perdita's father might very appropriately have kept at his bedside, The Kalender of Shepardes, an almanac and handbook for farmers which was reprinted many times throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This manual divides man's 72-year life expectancy into four equal periods analogous to the seasons, which themselves fall into three-month periods beginning with February. The course of man's life parallels the course of the year: "So is deuyded man in to foure parties, as to youth, strength, wysedome, and age.. ."' February is early childhood, and by April "the earth and the threes [sic] is couered in grene and flowers, and in euery partye goodes encreaseth habundauntly, then commeth the chylde to gather the swete flowers of hardynes... ." June is the prime of life: "when man is xxxvi. yere, he may ascend no more, for then hath nature gyuen hym beauty and strengthe, at the full, and rypeth the sedes of parfyte vnderstandynge." By October he must make his peace with God: "And also the labourers soweth newe sedes in the earth, for the yere to come. And then he that soweth nought, shal nought gather. And then in there [sic] other vi. yeres a man shal take him selfe vnto God for to do penaunce and good 1G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life (Oxford, I947); S. L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale: A Study (London, n.d.); Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: The Last Phase (London, I954); F. David Hoeniger, "The Meaning of The Winter's Tale", UTQ, XX (Oct. i950), II-26. 2Here Beginneth the Kalender of Shepardes Newly Augmented and Corrected (London, T. Este, [I570?]), sig. A7. Compare Thomas Tusser, Fiue hundreth pointes of good Husbandrie (London, I590), p. 54: "The yeare I compare, as I find for a truth, / the spring vnto childhood, the summer to youth: / The Haruest to manhood, the winter to age, / all quicklie forgot, as a play on the stage."