“For him, I partly know his mind”The Curious Union of Paulina and Camillo in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale Lisa Marciano (bio) Key Words Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, Paulina and Camillo The closing moments of The Winter’s Tale often challenge students, teachers, and critics alike. After revealing that Hermione and Perdita still live and that Leontes has reformed his ways, Paulina, the queen’s preserver, says that she, like “an old turtle[dove],”1 will spend her days mourning for her lost mate, Antigonus. Leontes then, amid the general rejoicing, says to Paulina that he has followed her marital advice, and that she therefore should follow his. He concludes: I’ll not seek far(For him, I partly know his mind) to find theeAn honorable husband. Come, Camillo,And take her by the hand, whose worth and honestyIs richly noted. (5.3.141–5) Students sometimes find this passage amusing, for it seems a convenient way of accounting for all the characters at the drama’s conclusion. They assume Shakespeare’s mindset was that, if one marriage is good, two are even better and, since there are two single adults left at the end, the Bard somewhat awkwardly paired them up and sent them [End Page 99] packing. The students do have a point. At first this seems like the kind of passage Samuel Johnson would have complained about in insisting Shakespeare sometimes, “when he found himself near the end of his work, and, in view of his reward . . . shortened the labour, to snatch the profit.”2 Contemporary critics, if they even discuss this passage, greatly disagree on how to read the alliance. So how should a reader construe it? The argument presented here is that these characters represent faith and reason; that Shakespeare drew upon rich literary predecessors, the allegorical medieval morality plays, in constructing Paulina and Camillo; and that he might have had many reasons for conveying his ideas through the veiled method of allegory—particularly if his stance on the union of faith and reason seemed more reflective of a Catholic than Protestant perspective. Before examining allegory in this drama, however, we have some background to cover. The definition of allegory used here is from Jane K. Brown’s The Persistence of Allegory: “Allegorists depict something other than what they really mean. Their objects of representation are normally invisible, either because they are abstract (for example, Faith or the soul), because they are supernatural and invisible in the world (angels, the devil), or because they are politically too dangerous to represent directly.”3 Also helpful is a seminal study, Robert Grams Hunter’s Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness. Hunter views the character Leontes in The Winter’s Tale as an allegorical representation of sinful man, noting, “The soliloquies (more properly ‘asides’) in which Leontes presents his diseased psyche to us are among Shakespeare’s most brilliant displays of his ability to dramatize the human mind.”4 Hunter helps the audience see some characters as attributes of Leontes, for he says that, at the end, “Paulina . . . has already served the gods by concealing Hermione from her husband. Now she serves them further by exacerbating Leontes’ mental sufferings through her constant reminders of his crimes. She is the personification of Leontes’ conscience and she is determined that his sufferings will continue until the pattern of the gods has worked itself out.”5 Although it is daunting to argue with a study that opens up the plays as expansively as this [End Page 100] one, I suggest a refinement to his interpretation of Paulina. This essay proposes that Paulina stands not merely for Leontes’s conscience, but for faith itself and the rites and rituals associated with it—the faith that Leontes rejects when he ignores the oracle declaring Hermione innocent and accuses his wife of infidelity. In that case, what are we to make of the marriage of Paulina and Camillo—a marriage that often prompts bewilderment? We may see it as Shakespeare’s way of symbolizing that faith (Paulina) has been united to reason (Camillo) in the reformed Leontes. Their union indicates Leontes is healed and his faculties restored—an integrity...