Free The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare Page A

filled with further symbolic toys, including a giant rocking horse on which Leontes and Mamillius rode together and a “school-boy’s top” (2.1.123) which “fill[ed] the theatre with a gently evocative hummingwhich recur[red] at the end of the play.” 54 The cube, too, recurred at the end, providing the setting in which Hermione’s statue was displayed.
    The problem of Leontes’ jealousy was also given a stylized solution. “Mr. Nunn simply makes it a condition of the story and establishes it by a stunning change of lighting in which we see Hermione and Polixenes as they appear in his fevered dream.” 55 Thus the audience was able both to believe in Hermione’s purity and to experience Leontes’ imaginings themselves, seeing them through his eyes, as Barber’s startled reaction indicates: “[Hermione] actually appeared to fawn upon Polixenes.” 56 Similar stylization was used in the trial scene, in which Hermione fainted in slow motion. Finally, a single actress, Judi Dench, was cast in the roles of both Perdita and Hermione, in order to underline “the allegorical meaning of the end of the play … [in which Leontes] finds his daughter returned to him in the form of his wife.” 57
    Dench proved immensely successful in both parts. J. C. Trewin’s comments in the
Birmingham Post
may seem hyperbolic, but are typical in both tone and content of the general critical response:
    As Hermione the actress affected me like the pure clear beauty of a starlight night. We have not had in our time a performance of more simply expressed emotion … As Perdita, she is enchantingly the queen of the sheep-shearing, dancing like a wave of the sea and speaking … neither with a brittle gentility nor with a country accent too forced … Miss Dench’s response to the verse is unerringly exact. 58
    Despite this effusive praise for Dench herself, the concept of the doubling proved less successful. The roles had last been combined by Mary Anderson in 1887, when Perdita’s lines in the final scene had been cut, and the character played there by a stand-in who kept her back to the audience. Nunn’s solution was more tricksy than this: a stand-in for Hermione in the first half of the scene enabled Dench to deliver Perdita’s lines; a rapid swap then introduced a stand-in Perdita, allowing Dench to take over as Hermione. Even though this sleight of hand worked effectively, the audience was inevitably distracted,focusing on the theatrical tour de force rather than surrendering totally to the emotion of the final scene.
    Nunn’s production proved immensely influential. The stylized white decor, the focus on the personal rather than political, the youthful protagonists, the highlighting of Mamillius, his toys and nursery, the doubling of Hermione and Perdita, and the mid-twentieth-century setting have all been reused repeatedly since. Nunn was also responsible for introducing the business in which Paulina hands the baby to Leontes in Act 2 Scene 3, and also the first postwar director to use Hermione herself to speak the words of Antigonus’ dream.
1976: Ritual in Lapland
    John Barton’s 1976 production, co-directed with Trevor Nunn, was heavily cut throughout. It stands apart from the mainstream of RSC productions of
The Winter’s Tale
, and has generated comparatively little attention since. The Arctic setting, chosen for the symbolism of Lapland’s solstice festivals, failed to capture reviewers’ imagination, and the lack of the usual contrast between Sicilia and Bohemia was heavily criticized. The interpretation focused strongly on storytelling and emphasized ritual throughout, notably in the trial scene and in its use of motifs such as the bear.
    Hermione and Perdita were linked by exoticism. Critic Richard David stated: “This Hermione was not the simple symbol of nobility and sincerity that is sometimes seen, but a