Re-reading Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale! As Act 4, scene 4 continues, it’s more talk of music and songs, but it there something more to it?

Picking up from where we left off, there’s more tomfoolery between the shepherd’s son (or the clown, as he’s called in some editions) and Autolycus. This includes a lot of talk about the son buying ballads in print from Autolycus. My sources are a little sketchy on this, but I think the idea is that travelling musicians back in Shakespeare’s day used to sell written song lyrics, which could be applied to commonly known tunes, so anyone would be able to sing them. Mopsa, the son’s doting love interest, says she loves printed ballads “alife” (meaning “dearly”). She adds that because the lyrics are printed on paper, she believes they must be true. Interesting sentiment from Shakespeare the writer.

Autolycus describes the story of the ballad with some perplexing word soup. It’s about the wife of a “usurer,” which the internet tells me is a money lender who profits from huge interest rates from his clients. Shakespeare uses this phrase a lot to connote trickster and rogue types. A real knave, as it were. He says the woman was “brought to bed” with “twenty bags” at once. My sources are ambiguous about this, but it seems to mean that she was born already in huge debt. Then Autolycus makes her monstrous, saying she eats snakes and toads. Autolycus swears the story is true, saying he got it from Mistress Taleporter, and the audience laughs because “taleporter” is another word for “gossip.”

These jokes fly over Mopsa and the son’s heads, as they consider buying the ballad but want to see more first. He tells her an even more incredulous story, taking place on “the fourscore of April,” which is like saying “April 80th.” It’ about a fish that magically appeared on shore, “forty thousand fathom above water,” and sang a song “against the hard hearts of maids.” Autolycus says some believe that this was a woman transformed into a fish as punishment because she would not “exchange flesh” (wa-HEY!) with her lover.

What’s interesting here is that Autolycus calls her a “cold fish.” And now we get to play a game of Did Shakespeare Invent This? Calling someone a cold fish is like saying someone acts distant and unresponsive, especially in a romantic and/or flirtatious setting. A lot of the nerdy grammar sites do indeed attribute the phrase cold fish as originating in The Winter’s Tale. Others, however, argue that the saying is older than that, referring to fish being sold at markets, still alive but sad and limp when laid out on ice. The 2010 movie Cold Fish, from famed weirdo director Sion Sono, is about two rival tropical fish store owners who are also both serial killers. Not sure how this might parallel The Winter’s Tale.

Autolycus says five judges have sworn that the fish story is true, and that it has more witnesses than his case can carry. Based on whatever prop they’ve given the actor for a case, that number is likely zero. Mopsa asks that ballad to be set aside as well, and she asks for a merrier story. Autolycus offers a ballad than can be sung to the tune of “Two Maids Wooing a Man.” I found a bunch of classical music sites with songs claiming to be this, but I can’t speak to their authenticity.

Autolycus sings the song’s male part, while Mopsa and fellow shepherdess Dorcas play the two women. The lyrics are simple, as the man says he’s leaving and the two women want to know where he’s going. The shepherd’s son interrupts, saying that his father is approaching with serious business. He promises to the buy the songs and finish singing them later. Suggestively, he leaves not just with Mopsa, but all the shepherdesses.

Okay, this is all some fun silliness, but why is it in the play? Could this be calling back to the conflict between Leontes, Hermoine, and Polixenes? Maybe Hermoine, daughter of a king forced into an arranged marriage, is the usurer’s wife burdened with debt. Maybe she’s the cold fish, at least from Leontes’ perspective. Are Leontes and Polixenes the two “wooing maids” wondering where Hermoine has gone? Or… maybe I’m just reaching.

Next: Creature feature.

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