The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare: an overview and reading plan

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's later plays and at the time he was writing (around 1611) the 'tragicomedy' was in vogue. A tragicomedy is defined by the Oxford School Shakespeare as a play in which 'alarming events and overwhelming passions narrowly avoid their tragic consequences only in the nick of time.'

There is some light-hearted banter in The Winter's Tale but overall the story is melancholy and serious.

Polixenes King of Bohemia has been visiting his childhood friend, Leontes, King of Sicilia. Nine months have passed and Polixenes is planning to return home but Leontes tries to coax him into staying longer. At first Polixenes insists he must go but when Hermione joins her husband in coaxing him to stay, he agrees.

Suddenly Leontes' mind is filled with groundless suspicion and alarm. A form of madness overtakes him and he interprets every innocent word and gesture between his friend and his wife as betrayal and deceit. His behaviour changes towards them both and in his overwhelming jealousy he speaks to his courtier, Camillo, of his suspicions. Camillo sees nothing untoward and reproves his master but Leontes takes no heed.

Camillo, concerned by the situation, warns Polixenes who by this time is aware of the change in his friend's attitude towards him. He decides to return home immediately and Camillo goes with him.

When Leontes discovers that Polixenes has flown, he confronts Hermione and accuses her of adultery. Believing that the child she is carrying was fathered by Polixenes he sends her to prison.

Hermione gives birth to a daughter, Perdita, whilst in prison but Leontes rejects his child and commands Antigonus, one of his lords and an honourable man, to take the baby and abandon her to the elements.

 

John Massey Wright

John Massey Wright's watercolour of a scene from 'The Winter's Tale' - See more at: http://findingshakespeare.co.uk/exit-pursued-by-a-bear#sthash.qL9sCU2m.dpuf

John Massey Wright's watercolour of a scene from 'The Winter's Tale' - See more at: http://findingshakespeare.co.uk/exit-pursued-by-a-bear#sthash.qL9sCU2m.dpuf

Antigonus loses his life while trying to save Perdita but she is found on the Bohemian coast by an honest shepherd who understands there is a mystery behind her appearance and she grows up under his care.

Meanwhile word comes to Leontes that the Queen is dead and he is filled with remorse.

'Leontes is deeply affected.

It's now clear he should not have suspected 

The Queen of deceit; 

His despair is complete, 

Both for them and the babe he rejected...'

James Muirden (Shakespeare in a Nutshell)

Years pass and Polixenes' son, Florizel meets and falls in love with Perdita the 'shepherdess' and is determined to marry her even though his father threatens to disinherit him if he does so.

Camillo steps in and helps the young couple escape to...Sicilia where Leontes, completely humbled and repentant still grieves over his actions sixteen years before.

All through this tale I was struck by the honourable actions of everyone else in contrast to those of Leontes. He was surrounded by people who were loyal and  trustworthy but his jealousy distorted and tainted everything.

The closing scene is moving as Leontes comes to a place of forgiveness and restoration and reminds me of the biblical verse, 'I will restore the years the locust has eaten.'

We listened to the Arkangel audio recording of this play over a twelve week period. My 14 year old followed along with a free online script and I used the Oxford School Shakespeare. My 9 year old daughter just listens and having a basic outline of most of Shakespeare's plays from having read both the Lamb and Nesbit versions she follows along very well.

Be aware that if you have younger ones listening in that the word 'bastard' is used a number of times in the first few scenes. When you hear it belted out by a vehement Ciaran Hinds it is rather jarring when you're not prepared for it. 

 

Our 12 Week Schedule

Week 1

Act 1

Scene 1 - Scene 2 finishing after Leontes says: 'Go play, Mamillius. Thou'rt an honest man.' (Exit Mamillius)

Week 2

Scene 2 from 'Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer,' to end of Scene 2

Week 3

Act 2

All of Scene 1 and Scene 2

Week 4

Act 2

All of Scene 3

Week 5

Act 3

All of Scene 1 and Scene 2

Week 6

Act 3

All of Scene 3

Act 4

Scene 1 (very short)

Week 7

Act 4

All of Scene 2 and Scene 3

Week 8

Act 4

Scene 4 (this is a very long section and I just stopped about a third of the way through)

Week 9

Act 4

Continue with Scene 4

Week 10

Act 4

Finish Scene 4

Week 11

Act 5

All of Scene 1

Week 12

Act 5

All of Scene 2 and 3

The End

Co-operating with the Divine Teacher

Alpine Flowers, Mt Kosciusko

Some thoughts on atmosphere & relationship...

I'm taking Oswald Chambers out of his initial context here, but this quote from his book My Utmost for His Highest meshes with what I've been reading in Charlotte Mason's book, Parents and Children, especially Chapter 5:

The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.

It's easy to put all our work into the 'doing' of education and to forget or disregard the importance of 'relationship' - with our child and with the Divine Teacher.

And without the relationship we don't have the atmosphere that is vital part of the whole:

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

Chambers says that relationship is the area where we find ourselves constantly assailed.

To assail:

To attack with a view to overcome, by motives applied to the passions 

To overthrow

I generally know when I'm being assailed.

I become aware that I've made decisions without first pausing in my spirit.

I've made a decision based on my passions or feelings or a sense of urgency.

For me this isn't usually in the big decisions. I'll talk those through with my husband.

It's all the small ones that add up over time.

Charlotte Mason's words on co-operating with the Divine Teacher are encouraging but at the same time sobering:

Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable condition of all the divine workings. We recognise this in what we call spiritual things, meaning the things that have to do more especially with our approaches to God; but the new thing to us is, that grammar, for example, may be taught in such a way as to invite and obtain the co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a way as to exclude His illuminating presence from the schoolroom.

Part of that co-operation involves keeping our relationship with God, and the atmosphere it produces, not just intact but vigorous and healthy.

It is wonderfully empowering, not to mention reassuring, to know that God instructs my child.

He knows my child's innermost being.

He is familiar with all his/her ways.

'God doth Instruct.'––In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child.

Let the mother visualise the thought as an illuminated scroll about her newborn child, and let her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child, except under the sense of the divine co-operation. 

Free Science Resources

We've used the videos below alongside Apologia Science, Secrets of the Universe (Ambleside Online Year 7), The Mystery of the Periodic Table, by Benjamin Wiker and Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick (AO Year 6).

The Periodic Table

We've been using the University of Nottingham videos to go through the periodic table. Each element is explained and some experiments are shown with a good dash of humour thrown in.

A photographic table showing the elements. Click on the element to see a photo and description. For example this page on Titanium, something we were talking about after the dentist explained how it came to be used in humans for implants.

The Periodic Table in song in the order of the elements:





Professor Julius Sumner Miller’s TV Show “Why Is It So?” was broadcast in Australia on the ABC from 1963 to 1986. We've used a number of his videos to supplement our science studies. I've put some of those below and this website has a list of others we've also used.
The following videos fit with this book:

 Pascal's Principle: the Properties of Liquids

Archimedes' Principle





'Why doesn't the temperature rise as we get higher?' This question came up recently and as my boys really enjoy Top Gear this video was helpful.




And then we added this one, Where Does the Atmosphere End?

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

Alas Babylon is a post-apocalyptic novel set in the fictional town of Fort Repose in Florida, USA.

The author worked in the war office at the time of WW2 under Franklin Roosevelt and was also a war correspondent in Europe. He later became concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Russian/American arms race and the minefield of possible political & technological errors. The development and use of new weapons had brought WW2 to an end but in doing so had also ushered in a new threat.

Published in 1959 at the height of the Cold War, Alas, Babylon explores how survivors of a nuclear holocaust might survive and rebuild a civilised society.

  

Last year I read On the Beach by Nevil Shute which also dealt with the after effects of a nuclear attack. Written two years before Alas, Babylon and set in Australia, it was well written but grim (ultimately everyone dies) so I was in no rush to read another story of nuclear catastrophe - but it was a title chosen by the book club I try to get to every couple of months and I have the opportunity to go this month, so I read it.

Very basically the story follows one man, Randy Bragg; his relationships, his response to the disaster and how he comes to a place of leadership in the community and begins to re-establish order and justice.

Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.

So ended The Day.

What it brought home to me was:

1) How dependent we are on community and technology for daily life

2) How insulated we are from the natural world

   

3) How crisis reveals character.

Unable to cope with the sudden change and the loss of his dominion, the bank manager shot himself.

'...well, let them try to go on without dollars. He would not accept such a world.'

Faith has the ability to rise up above our circumstances...

Many things had happened in the past few days and yet their conversation always came back to the Easter services. People hadn't been like that before The Day. He could not imagine any of them voluntarily getting up before dawn and then walking three miles on empty stomachs to watch the sun come up, 

sing hymns, and listen to sermons however short...

Man absorbed strength from the touch of his neighbor's elbow...

Faith had not died under the bombs and missiles.

This was one of my favourite passages:

Alone of all the people in Fort Repose, Alice continued with her regular work...

Since The Day, the demand for her services had multiplied.

It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education. Alice would never admit it aloud, but for the first time in her thirty years as librarian of Fort Repose she felt fulfilled, even important.

All entertainment, all amusements, all escape, all information again centred in the library...There were not enough chairs to accommodate her readers. They sat on the front steps, in the windows, on the floor with backs against walls or stacks. They read everything, even the classics. And the children came to her, when they were free of their chores, and she guided them. And there was useful research to do. Randy and Doctor Gunn didn't know it, but as a result of her research they might eat better thereafter. It was strange...that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.

Unlike On the Beach, (mentioned this briefly here) there is an element of hope in this story and the underlying theme is survival. Reading Alas, Babylon gave me an opportunity to look at the everyday things I take for granted: running water, electricity, security, music, communications, access to grocery stores, transport...the list goes on, and realise how much I have to be thankful for living in a civilised world.

The book is an easy read. It's not great literature but it is thought provoking.

Scheduled in Year 10 of the Sonlight Curriculum. It contains adult themes so I'd suggest a quick preview to see if it's suitable for your student.

The spores of kindness, as well as faith, survived in this acid soil.