Re-reading Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale! Act 2 Scene 2 introduces more new characters and keeps the plot moving.

The scene brings in a character we haven’t met before, Paulina. This is the wife of Antigonus, the trusted Sicilian courtier who will… exit, pursued by a bear!!! The “characters of the play” bit at the start of the script tells us she’s his wife, but there’s nothing signifying that in the dialogue of her intro. Perhaps, when Antigonus mentions his family in the previous scene, that a production can show her with him at that point. Or perhaps productions can wait until the following scene at treat this a big reveal.

The opening set up is that the queen, Hermoine, is in jail and Paulina wants an audience with her. This is against the jailer’s orders. After some back-and-forth, the jailer instead agrees to let Paulina speak with Emilia, one of Hermoine’s ladies. Emilia says the queen is “before her time delivered.” Before the audience can dwell on this, Emilia almost immediately confirms that this means the queen has given birth to a baby girl. Paulina initially assumes it’s a boy before Emilia corrects her.

Paulina says that the king, Leontes, must be informed about the baby. She volunteers, arguing that she’s “honey-mouthed” enough to get Leontes to listen to reason. Emilia praises Paulina for being good, honorable, and noble, and only she can be trusted with this task. (This throws a wrench in my idea of an interpretation of the play where the Sicilians are devil/demon types and the Bohemians are all angelic types.)

The scene ends with Paulina convincing the jailer to let her take the baby with her. The jailer says he doesn’t have “warrant” to do so. Paulina gives a speech about the baby being free from the womb being like freedom from a cell, and the jailer goes along with this. It’s nice to see the jailer have a little bit of personality at the end of the scene, rather than be just a stock “guard” character.

The big problem with this scene is that Hermoine and the baby are talked about, but not seen. A film adaptation could easily cut away to the sad image of Hermoine holding the baby while in her prison cell. A staged version could do something similar, by having Hermoine’s actress in a spotlight upstage or on a balcony. (It’s Shakespeare – there’s always a balcony.) Also, time has passed, but this can be portrayed in an edit for a movie, or perhaps with a short music interlude on stage. My Folger edition has a hilarious illustration from 1580 by Jakob Ruff of a woman giving birth. It’s a giant woman surrounded by tiny midwives, while two men in the background are more interested in looking at some star chart. It says a lot about the weird world of The Winter’s Tale.

Next: The conscience (or not?) of the king.

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