'The Wittiest Partition': Bottom, Paul, and Comedic Resurrection

Abstract

THE pliability of death is ubiquitous to comedy and Shakespeare is inordinately fond of bringing characters back to life: Hero returns to life to accomplish the happy-ending of Much Ado, Claudio comes back as if from the grave in Measure for Measure, Imogen rises from her swoon to gladden her brothers’ hearts in Cymbeline, Pericles's wife Thasia is brought back from the dead through a magician's arts and Falstaff leaps up on the battle-field at Shrewsbury after the Prince leaves him for dead.1 Twice Shakespeare takes the device one step further and hides from the audience, as well as the other characters, that the person mourned as dead is actually alive. This strategy enables the comedic coupling at the end of The Comedy of Errors and The Winter's Tale to be almost miraculously complete. In The Winter's Tale, by preserving Paulina's secret, Shakespeare deepens the theatrical mystification of the moment and opens up a quasi-theological dimension to the scene.2 Hermione is not a figure of Christ, but in a culture in which the primary myth of faith centred on someone rising again, Shakespeare's scene is parasitic upon the wonder that the Resurrection generates.