The Winter's Tale, perhaps one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays to the general public, is one of his best works. This play is one of his last pieces, and is considered a romance. Essentially, a romance is a conglomerate of different genres; they may contain elements of tragedies, histories, comedies, and more. The Winter's Tale begins similar to Othello, a revenge tragedy, and ends more along the lines of a comedy with "happily ever after" marriages. Just as a romance is a mixture of various types of plays, so this anthology is a mixture of various genres. In looking at varying genres and different forms of adaptations, this anthology explores the relationships between different characters within The Winter's Tale.
In order to fully appreciate this anthology, it is imperative to understand the importance of varying genres in connection to Shakespeare's work. One way to do this is to consider a very significant exhibition hall in London during the 1790s which contained a display of Shakespeare's work with a presentation of very different genres. This exhibition was created and commissioned by John Boydell and was comprised of history paintings, and he received backlash for how varied these works were (Rovee 509). While the main argument at this time was based on class differences and how this affected taste in art, literary critic Christopher Rovee explains that this situation exemplifies the power of varying genres. He writes, "The Shakespeare Gallery was a site of aesthetic play, where generic boundaries were actively reconfigured in the effort to produce an art" (510). The idea was not to please specific people, but to represent Shakespeare's work in an aesthetically different way. The success of these historical paintings or adaptations did not rest on the viewer, but on the art created by "reconfigure[ing]" the genre. In thinking of this digital anthology (which contains a novel, various poems, a ballet, and an opera), it is important to remember that varying genres create new art; Shakespeare has been written about for countless years, and re-imagining his works in numerous new forms can help us understand them in unprecedented ways.
To consider the usefulness of this anthology further, it is helpful to delve deeper into the idea of adaptations. Ruby Cohn details the differences between types of adaptations, which she calls offshoots, in "A Mishmash of Adaptations and Transformations." She uses Christopher Spencer's definition of a general adaptation in order to explain that this type of offshoot "includes substantial cuts of scenes, speeches, and speech assignments; much alteration of language; and at least one and usually several important (or scene-length) additions" (3). According to this definition, the typical adaptations found in this anthology include The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson, The Winter's Tale ballet at the Royal Opera House, and The Winter's Tale opera from the English National Opera. These three iterations all follow the same plot of Shakespeare's original, though the latter two follow the details of the play more closely. While they have each cut the play down to three acts rather than five, the names of the characters and the interactions between them remain similar to the original. Winterson's rendition, on the other hand, devolves more from the original. The names of the characters are similar, but not identical, to Shakespeare's play. Leontes becomes Leo, Hermione becomes MiMi, and Polixenes becomes Xeno. Moreover, though the general sequence of events remains the same, Winterson exercises more artistic liberty, giving a The Winter's Tale a very contemporary feel.
The three other works of this anthology are closer to what Cohn calls transformations, which "tend to be slighter than adaptations" (47). In these versions, "Shakespearean characters move through a partly or wholly non-Shakespearean plot, sometimes with introduction of non-Shakespearean characters" (4). All three of these works are poems and have the same title-"A Winter's Tale"-written by Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, and D.H. Lawrence. While Thomas's poem is much longer than the other two, it is nonetheless "slighter" than the other adaptations. Moreover, each of these poems focus on themes from the original play with characters that share a familiarity with Shakespeare's, but they do not follow the plot in the slightest. The bleak and troubling atmosphere of Sicilia is there, but none of the characters have names and neither do the places. In addition, the single female character in the poems is often a blurry mix of Hermione and Perdita. Nonetheless, a feeling of loss within a relationship is evident throughout all three.
Relationships as a significant factor of The Winter's Tale became the focus for this anthology based on the work of Jeanette Winterson. The majority of her works explore relationships, and especially those of families. She often emphasizes the idea that "nurtured relationships are as emotionally bonding as natural ones," and this concept is explicitly present in The Gap of Time (Ellam 79). In Shakespeare's original play, Perdita is taken in by a poor Shepherd, and in Winterson's work, Perdita is adopted by a man named Shep. In her adaptation, the close bond between Perdita and her adopted father is highlighted more strongly than it is in the original. Moreover, in her writing, the "traditional, biological family is, at times, used in order to be exposed as brutal and false" (Ellam 79). Brutality and false perceptions run rampant in The Winter's Tale, so it is no surprise that Winterson chose to create her own version of this work.
In taking a look at the rest of these adaptations and transformations as a whole, while they all contain their own distinct qualities, they each comment on the various relationships portrayed in the original play. Understanding how each of these authors view relationships within The Winter's Tale can aid us in understanding a noteworthy feature of this work. Herein lies the exploration and clarification of this idea, and hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching it.
Works Cited:
Cohn, Ruby. "A Mishmash of Adaptations and Transformations." Modern Shakespeare Offshoots, Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 3-59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x15k7.4.
Ellam, Julie. "Jeanette Winterson's Family Values: From 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to Lighthousekeeping.'" Critical Survey, vol. 18, no. 2, 2006, pp. 79-88. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41556168.
Rovee, Christopher. "'Everybody's Shakespeare': Representative Genres and John Boydell's 'Winter's Tale.'" Studies in Romanticism, vol. 41, no. 4, 2002, pp. 509-543. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25601585.
Pictures:
https://bugaga.ru/pictures/1146765153-zimnyaya-skazka-kiliana-shenbergera.html https://medium.com/@pwang/orientation-part-2-after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-comes-17976f3f4b7b https://stageagent.com/shows/play/1705/the-winters-tale https://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/win198604-the-winters-tale/search/rsc_person:ocallaghan-sean/page/1/view_as/grid https://cincyshakes.com/box-office/ https://www.google.com/search?q=shakespeare+-+winter%27s+tale+-+act+v,+scene+iii&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlwEJj0DhaHMkPBIaiwELEKjU2AQaBAgVCAAMCxCwjKcIGmIKYAgDEiiCBJcZyRbIFuwWjg-WGZIOgQ_1CFbg6tjq5Orc69i39LbU6iS6-Otg-GjAVDQUjE8XuIA5-h91e-jjJzqRmzAH3UAbs-OkOB3tSNH0k8pfHpC0y5Q0zzKo9gnUgBAwLEI6u_1ggaCgoICAESBMe86DkM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1rc7vuPjeAhULiIMKHRnRBrcQwg4IKygA&biw=1103&bih=563#imgrc=btD20sGS8o-qHM: https://www.google.com/search?q=xenoblade+chronicles+2+dahlia&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlwEJWgl-BiGC2fAaiwELEKjU2AQaBggVCAEICQwLELCMpwgaYApeCAMSJroBTZEWpwO7ARasA-wV7xWZC8Qi2ijYKKI34SjoKLY34CLnKLU3GjAWbkXRcMOf6aNG17j88Xv4PHNzZklx-SzPYMuOh6ZGJEKcU0K-p9RU7Fit9mo-ZzUgBAwLEI6u_1ggaCgoICAESBNlJOfQM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM3eOCufjeAhVJyYMKHWdPC6oQwg4IKygA&biw=1103&bih=563&dpr=1.65#imgrc=jjXwqwnoveDLlM:https://www.google.com/search?q=winter%27s+tale+illustration&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlgEJelnFWqAHDnoaigELEKjU2AQaBAgVCAoMCxCwjKcIGmEKXwgDEifTCYYH7RLsEocHvRbWCeUbWb4V8y20LIcusiPsI7U6tzrAIPYt9S0aMHhlMXFka64wdfUFHZBWzTSrjWgINQzp3e0Uor3mm_1DmpNvn5XCF62-9hR1TE0QOxyAEDAsQjq7-CBoKCggIARIEgCCfKgw&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbwe_w3IXfAhVQd6wKHcS5DuUQwg4IKygA&biw=1106&bih=518#imgrc=LyfxiQW20uII-M:https://www.google.com/search?q=winter%27s+tale+play+poster&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSmQEJUkSdQy1TBEoajQELEKjU2AQaBggVCAEICQwLELCMpwgaYgpgCAMSKP0drwOIFY8WmQuJHukVlwv7DowV3iiiN9ghxyj1Ld8onC6-N8QitjcaMK0LmJ8yN-RPHhXVU1Uq6NCKzUg0vEiBZM0o4puKfPUipwZbFr0fs6Xvqv3H3RUUySAEDAsQjq7-CBoKCggIARIEX0uGiww&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTj52O3YXfAhUCDKwKHRfoDS4Qwg4IKygA&biw=1106&bih=518#imgrc=C4UNkJCNuc4uVM: