the performance. [colour]

Here is something that stuck out to me in the performance of A Winter's Tale at the Utah Shakespeare Festival; the use of colour in both costumes and sets.

The first time we see Hermione, she is wearing a long white robe- almost looking as if she is about to get married. White, a symbol of purity and cleanliness, suggests here that she is pure and innocent.

When she is in court being accused by her husband of infidelity, she is wearing a purple dress. While purple may only have the following meaning with LDS young women, it is still a valid analysis that the play director/costumer intended Hermione to represent integrity. In the young women's values, purple is the color for integrity. Interesting, that she is wearing purple while in court being accused falsely and thus still maintaining her integrity.

Added to Hermione's clothes is also Paulina who wears a dark purple jacket and skirt for much of the play. She is similarly a chaste and valiant woman (pulling out all my young womens vocab here) and strives to convince Leonte's of the queen's innocence and purity. 

After the interval, we then saw Perdita wearing white. When mother and daughter are reunited in the final act, they both wear flowing white gowns- further suggesting the innocence of women and their pure hearts.

Finally, when Leonte's has been grief stricken for 16 years and has proved that he is a regretful, sorry and changed man, the background of the set is illuminated in purple. This was the first and only time it occurred in the play and perhaps resembles a sort of finality with Leontes. That he has come to terms with his sins and is ready to live a more righteous and integrity-filled life.

Symbolism! 

Females.

Shakepeare's morals speak to me in Act 3 where everyone seems to be backing Queen Hermione over Leonte's. When perhaps this is a time when the King would have been feared and reverenced by his servants and men, it is interesting that even his best guards and other people around him, all plead with him to reconsider his judgment against his wife.

I am impressed with the amount of support that Shakespeare gave to the Queen. When this play was being written, no doubt womens rights were little. Being burned at the stake for all sorts of accusations like being a witch because she was singing or chanting something as she mixed spices and ingredients, women seemed to be only worthy of bearing children and doing a lot of dirty work around the house. In this scenario, although the king has the power to kill anyone who disagrees or argues with him, every single person around him is on the queen's side.

Another strong female character is that of Paulina. She defends the queen countless times and argues extensively with the King calling him "downright a fool". In 1773, a male critic Lewis Theobald, said of Paulina that she was "too gross and blunt". The very fact that critics of this time were not in favor of Paulina's character, suggests a familiar victimization of women.
On this feminist essay about Paulina, Elizabeth Brunner states: "Paulina fulfills a multitude of feminist expectations, both action-based and symbolic: she confronts the patriarch, she defends the sisterhood, she speaks for vulnerable children, she memorializes womanhood, she worships the great Goddess Nature, she preserves artistic beauty, she strives for gender reconciliation, and she finally restores balance in the community."

Go Shakespeare for giving us some strong female characters to love.

Jealousy

Not that I am any expert on love, but I have heard it said that jealousy can cause one to go insane. I think in the case of Leonte's abandoning his son to the forest, his rage is stemming from a deep-seeded jealousy of his wife being with another man, supposedly. If there was any instability in their relationship before Polixenes came, it would have been much easier for Leonte's to think he was seeing immorality and things happening behind his back because of pre-rooted suspicions of his wife. The play does not suggest any misbehavior before Polixene's arrived, and thus in my opinion, Shakespeare is making an statement on the effects of jealousy in our interpersonal relationships. Potentially damaging as jealousy can be to a relationship and even to just oneself, in this royal family, jealousy seems like it may be the end of their new born.
This is what is so great about Shakespeare- he taps into raw human emotions that are as relevant now as they were then. Maybe not to the point of killing a child, but still. 

A Winter's Tale

The relationship between Polixenes and Leontes would be interesting to study. We are given a little bit of information at first from the interaction between the two and we gather that they were good friends when they were younger. I wonder if when they went their separate ways to be King of Bohemia and Sicilia respectively, they only matured and grew up once they were away from each other. Now being back in the same place, both with wives and being King, they may indeed go back to their childish selves bceause that is the only way they remember acting around each other.

A short analysis like this might help explain why Leontes overreacts so much to Pelixenes having some sort of potential romance with Hermione. He may still be in this state of immaturity where jealousy is such a prominent part of friendships- especially in an odd number of friend groupings. I can distinctly relate this to my life where any attempted grouping of 3 girls, never went down well. Always one of us felt left out and would get bitter and jealous towards the others.

[I said most of this in our discussion today but it's still on my mind sorry!]

Commedia dell'arte and Hamlet.

Commedia dell'arte to recap, is an Italian form of theatre where the actors usually wear masks to identify themselves. Each character is made up from a group of stock characters that have the same name and personality characteristics in whatever play they are written into.

In Hamlet, Claudius could be seen as the Commedia dell'arte character Pantalone, who is usually a rich and retired, mean man. Pantalone often has a young wife which reminds me of the lust Claudius has shown for Gertrude. Hamlet might be glad to see this comparison as he believes Claudius to be extremely selfish and greedy for lusting after Gertrude.

Hamlet himself could be compared to Pulcinella who is known to be self centered. Hamlet has proven to be a self centred character who introverts a lot of his feelings and makes snide comments behind his breath. Instead of trying to grasp any sort of consideration of empathy for his mother and her decision to be with Claudius, he is very confrontational and dismissive of her actions. Pulcinella is either stupid pretending to be clever or clever pretending to be stupid. He has little care for life and loves to pick a fight and shed blood. This quite obviously, draws to mind when Hamlet kills Polonius believing that he is Claudius. His lack of concern or fear in realizing he has killed a somewhat innocent man, affirms that he may be going a little insane despite only 'pretending' to be insane.

These are only two of the characters taken from Hamlet and the stock Commedia dell'arte characters, but certainly more comparisons could me made. I like it.

So far, Shakespeare and I have a good relationship. I haven't torn my eyes out over analyzing his plays and haven't been bored to death. Once when I wanted to seem particularly cool and read Shakespeare for leisure, I took out our family's ancient old crusty book of Shakespeare that had maybe 20 of his plays inside. Wonderfully heavy, it definitely gave me an air of superiority at the dinner table with this massive book just chillin next to me.
If I was lucky I might have got through Romeo and Juliet in the hopes of finding a teenage boy just like Romeo but I don't recall that ever happening. [Both finishing the play or finding a suicidal lover]

I can recall quite a few Shakespeare films that I've seen but interestingly my favorite is probably Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. I am pretty biased considering Baz is from my home country and so I obviously pledge allegiance to Australian filmmakers, but, I was really impressed with how the language was used in a modern setting and the world that they created. I thought it was executed beautifully.

Basically, I already have quite a love for Shakespeare but just need to be much better acquainted with his legendary language and bring our relationship to a new level.