The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Tradition

Abstract

T is curious that no appraiser or appreciator seems to have puzzled over the kinship of The Winter's Tale with the pastoral tradition. Most commentators tacitly assume the connection, then abandon to court other features. Some explain the drama as tragicomedy, some as one of the last plays. t 4 G @ Others see against the background of Elizabethan thought. Still others, lately, have examined the grammar, the vocabulary, and the reverberations of the imagery. All these approaches are good, cogent, helpful; but the pastoral element has gone begging for an analyst. For that matter, Sir Walter Greg once went so far as to say that it is characteristic of the shepherd scenes in that play, written in the full maturity of Shakespeare's genius, that, in spite of their origins in Greene's romance of Pandosto, they owe nothing of their treatment to pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life... .1 This persistent neglect of an important historical precedent deserves correction. I should like, therefore, first to try to show that Shakespeare is in fact very much a part of the pastoral tradition and that The Winter's Tale can be seen as an example of the English pastoral drama, which has roots in classical, Italian, and English literature. Then I should like to go on to a consideration of the freshness and vitality which Shakespeare brings to the tradition, showing how he transforms the hackneyed conventions of the pastoral into an involved and subtle commentary on appearance and reality. The most indirect influence upon the English pastoral drama and hence upon The Winter's Tale is the classical one. First of all there was the pastoral eclogue, given most of its forms and themes by Theocritus. His shepherds were isolated in the hills of Sicily where they were safe from the fever of the city and court. They piped to their flocks, contested in song with their companions, wooed their nymphs, complained of unrequited love. They spoke of milk-white lambs, pretty shepherdesses, and gifts of red apples. Theocritus' pastoral world was also a place where gods and goddesses rubbed shoulders with human Sicilians. But even the mythological deities were drawn with an exactness and a benign humor which have given the Theocritan idyls their hallmark of refreshing and delightful realism. The Greek pastoral idyl was extended into the Roman world by Virgil, who imitated Theocritus. In the exchange, something of the original freshness was lost. Virgil's mind was largely upon either his own problems or those of the world, and he used the eclogue to disguise contemporary allusion or direct satire