Archidamus, a Lord of Bohemia. Other Lords, and Gentlemen, and Seruants. 19. Shepheards...] Goaler, shepherds... Rowe. Mopsa. Shepherdesses. Added by Rowe. Another Sicilian Lord. Rogero, a Sicilian Gentleman. An Attendant on young Prince Mamillius. Officers of a 17 Court of Judicature. A Mariner. Time, as Chorus. Two other Ladies. Satyrs for a Dance.-Added by Theob., and followed (subs.) by subsequent editors. [Scene, partly in Sicilia, and partly in Bohemia. Rowe. ...in Bithynia. Han. 'Alipedis de stirpe dei versuta propago Nascitur Autolycus, furtum ingeniosus ad omne;' which Golding thus translates: Now when shee [i. e. Chione] full her tyme had gon, shee bare by Mercurye A sonne that hyght Avvtolychus who provde a wyly pye, And such a fellow as in theft and filching had no peere.' This allusion, WARBURTON, in his wonted dictatorial style, flatly denies, and asserts that it was to 'Lucian's Discourse on Judicial Astrology, where Autolycus talks much in the same manner.' Of course, Theobald was right, if any allusion were meant at all.—Douce (i, 353) observes that if Autolycus, according to Warburton, talks much in the same manner in Lucian, Warburton 'must have used some edition of Lucian vastly preferable to those which now remain.'-HALLIWELL quotes Barron Field to the effect that 'when Warburton pretends that the whole speech of Autolycus, on his first appearance, is taken from Lucian's book on Astrology, where Autolycus speaks much more in the same style, he must have been dreaming. In this book the myth that Autolycus is the son of Hermes is explained thus: that the art of stealing came to him from Hermes, under whose star he was born; and, at most, the passage in Shakespeare contains only an allusion to this.'-DYCE (Gloss.): J. F. Gronovius, in his Lect. Plautina, p. 161, ed. 1740, after citing Martial, viii, 59, observes: Celebratur autem in fabulis Autolygus maximus furum.' HALES (p. 109): Whence came this prince of pedlars and of pickpockets? No doubt the man had in some sort been espied and watched by him who has painted him for all time,—at some Stratford wake, when Mr Shakespeare of New Place was taking Mistress Susanna and her sister Judith to see what was to be seen; or at Bartholomew Fair, as he strolled through it perchance with Mr Benjamin Jonson; but what a name to give him! Yet it was carefully chosen. There was an ancient thief of famous memory called Autolycus. His name probably is significant of his nature. It should mean Allwolf, Very-wolf, Wolf's-self. See Homer, Od. xix, 392-8, where the old nurse Eurukleia is bathing the feet of the not yet identified Odusseus. Mopsa and Dorcas] Of these two names, Dorcas is Biblical, and, in Dorastus and Fawnia, Mopsa is the name of the old shepherd's wife. The Winters Tale. Actus Primus. Scœna Prima. Arch. Enter Camillo and Archidamus. F you fhall chance(Camillo) to visit Bohemia, on The Winters Tale.] Winter's Tale. 1. Scœna] Scena F1. 2. [A Palace. Rowe+. An Anti 5 chamber in Leontes's Palace. Theob. et seq. 4. Bohemia,] Bithynia, Han. (throughout). 6. on-foot] on foot F et seq. 4 The Winters Tale.] In the Appendix is given an extract from Forman's diary wherein an account is given of his witnessing a performance of the Winters Talle at the glob.' In reference to the title, COLLIER (New Particulars, 20) remarks that 'it would prove little that Forman gives the piece the same name as Shakespeare's play, because it was not very uncommon for two authors to adopt the same, or nearly the same, title, and "a winter's tale," like "an old wife's tale" (which Peele adopted for one of his dramas), was an ordinary expression. We meet with it, among other places, in Marlow and Nash's Dido, Queen of Carthage, 1594, III, iv, where Eneas says: "Who would not undergoe all kind of toyle To be well stor❜d with such a a winter's tale ?"'.-HUNTER (Illust. i, 412): There is, perhaps, no very strong reason for preferring one to the other, but, on the whole, the indefinite article, A Winter's Tale, appears to me to express more exactly the meaning of the author than the definite, which is prefixed in the original editions. It is a Tale for Winter, or, as in the Book of the Revels, a Winter Night's Tale, such a tale as we may conceive to have cheered the dreary hours of a winter's night as a family crowded round the fire, the storm beating against the casement, or, as it is ingeniously expressed in the title of one of the manuscripts in the library of Martin of Palgrave, written in 1605, as if written of purpose to shorten the lives of long winter nights that lie watching in the dark for us.' Shakespeare alludes to this practice of his times both in Macbeth, III, iv, and in Richard the Second, V, i. There are passages in the play which 8 Cam. I thinke, this comming Summer, the King of 8, 14, 16, 22. ] I F3. 8. comming] common Ff, Rowe i. plainly allude to it.-LLOYD (p. 133): The title suggests that it is in some manner a pendant of the Midsummer Night's Dream. The classic and romantic, the pagan and chivalric, are huddled and combined here as there, and still more glaringly and unscrupulously. In this play, however, we have no night scenes; the sea-side storm is wintry; there is a hint of season once at the fall of summer, and more significantly in the words of Mamilius, that note a tale of sadness as fittest for winter. Perhaps, again, the length of time covered by the story is in the spirit of a winter's tale, when time is to spare for unstinted narrative; but the main appropriateness of the title depends, after all, on the certain abruptness and violence of transition and combination which pervade the play, of which the anachronisms are minor types, associated with incongruities, to the full as startling, in the province of History's other handmaid, Geography.-R. G. WHITE (ed. i, 272): Shakespeare sought only to put a very popular story into a dramatic form; and of this he advertised his hearers by calling this play a Tale, just as before he had called a play similarly wanting in dramatic interest a Dream.-HALLIWELL (Introd. p. 45): The title, an acknowledgement that although a regular drama it was also a romance or tale suited for the evenings of winter, is, perhaps, a reason for the supposition that it originally appeared at the Blackfriars, a theatre which restricted its season to the winter months. The words of Mamilius in the Second Act can scarcely be imagined to have any intimate connection with the selection of the title of the comedy. In Shakespeare's time the country fire-side attracted many a narrator, whose knowledge of the vernacular traditional and imaginary tales current at the time would have sufficed to explain more than one allusion in contemporary literature that has baffled the collective efforts of modern enquirers. Many a winter's tale has shared the fate of Wade and his boat Guingelot, which was then so universally known that an editor of the time excuses himself from giving even an outline of the story, but the slightest further trace of which has escaped the careful researches of all who have treated on the series of romances to which it is supposed to have belonged. [See Tyrwhitt's note on v. 9298, Canterbury Tales.—ED.]—WARD (i, 437): It is possible that the pretty title was suggested to Shakespeare by that of A Winter Night's Vision, an addition to The Mirror for Magistrates, published by Nichols in 1610, the year when The Winter's Tale was perhaps written. 4. COLERIDGE (p. 254): Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the Kings and Hermione in the second scene. 4, 5, 6. on... whereon... on foot] R. G. WHITE (ed. ii): A marked indication of the heedlessness in regard to nicety of style with which Shakespeare wrote his plays. [Is not this very heedlessness' an illustration of the excellence which Coleridge detected in this conversation? The mere fact that the conversation is in prose ought to lead us to expect a certain careless, colloquial ease. The disparaging tone, undeniably present in some of the comments on the text in White's Second Edition, springs, I think, from an honest desire on White's part to be absolutely impartial in his literary judgement of Shakespeare. It was White's way, perhaps not the happiest, of protesting against indiscriminate and rhapsodical laudation.-ED.] 6. as I have said] In itself this parenthetical remark is quite needless, but, Sicilia meanes to pay Bohemia the Visitation, which hee iuftly owes him. Arch. Wherein our Entertainment shall shame vs: we will be iuftified in our Loues : for indeed-- Cam. 'Beseech you-- Arch.Verely I speake it in the freedome of my knowledge we cannot with fuch magnificence--- in fo rare-I know not what to say---Wee will giue you sleepie Drinkes, that your Sences (vn-intelligent of our insufficience) may, though they cannot prayfe vs, as little accufe vs. Cam. You pay a great deale to deare, for what's giuen freely. Arch. 'Beleeue me, I fpeake as my vnderstanding instructs me, and as mine honestie puts it to vtterance. Cam. Sicilia cannot fhew himselfe ouer-kind to Bohemia: They were trayn'd together in their Child-hoods; and there rooted betwixt them then fuch an affection, which cannot chuse but braunch now. Since their more mature Dignities,and Royall Neceffities,made feperation of their Societie, their encounters (though not Personall) hath been Royally attornyed with enter-change of 11. vs.] us, Theob. et seq. 13. 'Befeecn] Ff, Rowe +, Cap. Steev. Mal. Var. Wh. i, Ktly. 14. Verely] F. 16. fay-Wee] say. We Cap. et seq. (subs.). 20. to deare] too deare Ff. 22. 'Beleeue] F2. ΙΟ 15 20 25 30 25. Child-hoods] Child hoods F childhoods Rowe. 28. Seperation] F„ 29. Societie,] Society; Rowe, Pope. 30. hath] have Ff et seq. Royally] so royally Coll. ii. (MS). placed here in the first sentence, it conveys the idea of a conversation of which we hear only the closing portion.-ED. 11. shame vs] JOHNSON: Though we cannot give you equal entertainment, yet the consciousness of our good-will shall justify us. 25, 26. trayn'd... rooted] Possibly, by the association of ideas the training of vines and young trees suggested rooted.—ED. 26, 27. such . . . which] ABBOTT (§ 278): Such was by derivation the natural antecedent to which; such meaning 'so-like,' 'so-in-kind;' which meaning 'whatlike,' 'what-in-kind.' See also IV, iv, 844, "such secrets.. which.' 30. hath] An instance of the third person plural in th, which, in this instance, did not survive the First Folio.-ABBOTT (§ 334) gives two other instances: Mer. of Ven. III, ii, 33; III, ii, 270. 30. attornyed] JOHNSON: Nobly supplied by substitution of embassies, etc. |