The Winter's Tale Vs. the Faithful Sheperdess

Ben Sarnoff                                                                        

Stephanie DeGooyer

What’s So Funny About Sadness?

October 30, 2011

Unwarranted Dichotomy: Foster’s Unjust Applications of “Wonder” and “Surprise” in The Winter’s Tale and The Faithful Shepherdess

Verna A. Foster distinguishes between “wonder” and “surprise” arguing that while “Shakespeare’s romantic tragicomedies characteristically evoke wonder; the conclusions of Beaumont and Fletcher are defined by surprise” (Foster).  She reinforces these distinctions by claiming that:

Fletcherian surprise, a sudden pleasing sense of illumination, depends on the discovery late in the play of some important fact hitherto concealed from the audience, or, more likely, only hinted at, which permits a comic denouement...Shakespearean wonder, by contrast, is produced only gradually by the insistent forward moving of a play that induces in its audience a growing sense of the fitness of things, of the inevitability of the play’s fortunate conclusion. (Foster)  

On the other hand, the Oxford English Dictionary does not strongly differentiate between wonder: “A marvellous act or achievement…to do marvellous acts or bring about marvellous results,” and surprise: “The feeling or mental state, akin to astonishment and wonder, caused by an unexpected occurrence or circumstance” (OED). I challenge Foster’s applications of these definitions and argue that neither wonder nor surprise is particular to each author. Both wonder and surprise can be found in Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as each play contains a gradual “insistent forward moving” and “a sudden pleasing sense of illumination” (Foster).  In The Winter’s Tale, the epistemology of the play suggests an ending of inevitable good fortune; however, it doesn’t prepare the reader for the mystical revival of Hermione. Although it may be more difficult to see the “wonder” in The Faithful Shepherdess, it can be found in the message “to the reader.” In this text, Fletcher assures the reader that his play “wants death…yet brings some near it” (6).  The “surprise” is in the abrupt ending where Amoret and Perigot’s love is resurrected, while the other Shepherds and Shepherdesses are healed and brought “to virgin-state” (4.5.159).

        “Wonder’s” prevalence in The Winter’s Tale is illustrated in the knowledge and proof of Hermione’s innocence.  Cleomenes and Dion bring the Oracle of Delphos back to the court where Hermione is being indicted and it reads: “Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly begotten, and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found” (3.2.139). Leontes immediately questions the Oracle, “hast thou read truth?” a hint that there is an optimistic ending in view (3.2.144). Oracles, as Shakespeare’s audience would have thought, are always true and their foresight can’t be manipulated.  The theme of proof is extended further when Antigonus says, “If it prove she’s [Hermione] otherwise, I’ll keep my stables where I lodge my wife, I’ll go in couples with her, than when I feel and see her no further trust her, for every inch of woman in the world, ay, every dram of woman’s flesh is false if she be” (2.1.157-163). Hermione epitomizes honesty; she is the perfect woman.  If she commits adultery and lies about it, then every other woman has to be “false,” since Hermione is both morally and authoritatively the “highest” woman in society.  Evidence of “wonder” is further substantiated when Paulina convinces the once stubborn and arrogant Leontes not to remarry.  She tells him she will choose his next wife: “She shall not be so young as was your former, but she shall be such as, walked your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy to see her in your arms” (5.1.96-99).  Paulina anticipates the return of a wife that will make Leontes happy.  She, through some hidden knowledge, becomes another clue to a positive ending.