Shakespeare against the Skeptics: Nature and Grace inThe Winter's TaleAuthor(s) David N. Beauregard

Publication Details:Shakespeare's Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics. Ed. Stephen W. Smith and Travis Curtright. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002. p53-72.

Source:Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2006. FromLiterature Resource Center.

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

Full Text: [(essay date 2002) In the following essay, Beauregard argues that Shakespeare infused TheWinter's Tale and his other late plays with Roman Catholic ideology, in particular the sacrament of penance. The critic concludes that while Shakespeare's "art does not concern itself with explicitly putting forward religious doctrines, it bases itself on religious ritual and strives for a religious effect, wonder at the restoration that follows on 'doing penance.'"]This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod,And there is in this business more than natureWas ever conduct of. Some oracleMust rectify our knowledge.--The Tempest (5.1.242-45)Critics who claim that Shakespeare was skeptical about the supernatural face a series of difficulties. The trajectory of plays from A Midsummer Night's Dream to Hamlet to The Tempest shows the Bard giving dramatic representation to faeries, ghosts from Purgatory, miracles, witches, marvels and theophanies. These figurations do not seem to be empty "conventions," mere theatrical fictions, since they are fully integral to the action and have designs upon the sensibilities of the audience. Even further, the appearance of these figures sometimes presents a challenge to skeptical characters within the plays themselves. InHamlet, for example, the skeptical Horatio at first resists the testimony of Marcellus and Barnardo, but then is forced to admit the reality of the ghost of Hamlet Sr.:

Bar.

How now, Horatio? you tremble and look pale.Is not this [the Ghost] something more than fantasy?What think you on't?

Hor.

Before my God, I might not this believeWithout the sensible and true avouchOf mine own eyes.(1.1.53-58)1

Hamlet himself, often described by critics as "skeptical," in fact embodies a rash credulity by immediately believing in the ghost, and he makes an observation to underline the inadequacy of human reason: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (1.5.166-67). Moreover, his treatment of Polonius mocks the fundamental instability of the skeptic:

Ham.

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

Pol.

By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed.

Ham.

Methinks it is like a weasel.

Pol.

It is back'd like a weasel.

Ham.

Or like a whale.

Pol.

Very like a whale.(3.2.376-82)

Here Bacon's famous axiom comes quickly to mind: "What is Truth? said jesting Pilot; and would not stay for an answer." Bacon goes on to call attention to those "that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting," the Platonic point being that true knowledge is stable, and opinions (false or fashionable ideas) are changeable.

In All's Well That Ends Well, Lafew makes a corollary observation, this time against philosophers who reduce reality to material dimensions familiar to human reason:They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.(2.3.1-6; see also 2.1.179-80)The objects of Lafew's remarks are both the Reformed theologians, who believed that the age of miracles was past, and the natural philosophers, who dismissed consideration of "final causes" or the ultimate purposes of things.2 From the standpoint of Shakespeare's characters, it is significant that those who voice skeptical positions, like Horatio in Hamlet, Iago in Othello,and Edmund in King Lear, are ultimately confounded. Even the innocent Gonzalo in The Tempest, spouting political nonsense taken by Shakespeare from Montaigne, is transparently naïve, not to be taken seriously. The only exception would seem to be Cicero in Julius Caesar, but even there the case is ambiguous.In short, the real world for Shakespeare extends well beyond the confines of human sensibility, and skepticism is unable to come to terms with that reality. As Alonso's words inThe Tempest indicate, the world for Shakespeare is a "maze" and its workings cannot be reduced to "nature."3 The epistemological upshot is that there are limits to human reason, and knowledge must be "rectified" by something beyond nature, something mysterious and supernatural. As Lafew's words indicate, recognition of the reality of the supernatural ought to inspire us with fear, one species of which is wonder. But rationalism, whether Cartesian or scientific, in effect evades that fear by reducing everything to the "familiar," making "trifles of terrors," and skepticism, both classical and modern, constitutes a therapeutic means of achieving tranquility by putting all in question.4 By dogmatically refusing to take the supernatural into account, both modes of thought are unable to provide an adequate account of Shakespeare's plays, particularly the comedies and romances with their culmination in wonder. It is also important to note, as Richard Popkin has pointed out, that "the skeptics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries asserted, almost unanimously, that they were sincere believers in the Christian religion," and that "from Spinoza onward one of the main functions of skepticism has been to oppose traditional religion," a crucial historical reversal. Thus in the sixteenth century "'skeptic' and 'believer' are not opposing classifications."5 Skepticism was largely a tool used in religious controversy and not a widely accepted philosophical position.The Winter's Tale is a case in point. Against the rationalist and skeptical grain, Shakespeare designed the play to evoke a final sense of wonder, and toward that end he

makes numerous references to classical, Christian, and Roman Catholic theology. The classical references to the gods, mainly to Apollo and the oracle of "Delphos," are frequent and obvious.6 So too with some of the commonplaces of Christian theology. There are references to original sin, providence, redemption, and hell.7 More specifically, there are several references to Roman Catholic theology. The sacrament of penance, penitential fasting, guardian angels, spirits of the dead walking again, merit, miracles, and prayers for the dead are all alluded to.8 And two distinctive Roman Catholic gestures find expression: the shepherd makes the sign of the cross, and Perdita kneels before the statue of her mother and implores its blessing, just as one would kneel before a statue of the Virgin Mary. What all of this suggests is that Shakespeare does not see religion, even Greek religion, as myth or superstition in Enlightenment fashion. In fact, he attributes to it truth (the oracle speaks the truth) and justice (Antigonus' abandonment of Perdita is punished, Leontes' penitential practices lead to restoration). Even further, Shakespeare seems to conceive of the orders of nature and grace as existing in a harmony rather than an opposition, and thus he incorporates Greek religion (the oracle) and Christianity (Leontes' penance and various minor allusions) into a whole. To a good extent, the Greek element is simply a surrogate for Christianity. This baroque inclusiveness suggests again a Roman Catholic habit of mind, not the contrary taste for an exclusive plainness preferred by the Reformed Protestants. The play as a whole is shaped even more deeply by Shakespeare's Roman Catholic religious perspective. I shall argue thatThe Winter's Tale is essentially mimetic, that it "figures forth" in the person of Leontes the passion of jealousy and that its central action is structured along the lines of the three "parts" of the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, following the movements of contrition, confession, and satisfaction.9 In an obvious sequence, we have a transgression (Leontes' jealous persecution of Hermione), a revelation (the oracle), a recognition and confession of sin, and a long period of penitential satisfaction (see Cleomines' speech 5.1.1-6). Consequent upon the satisfaction made by Leontes, we can add to that a restoration, with Hermione's coming back to life in springtime with its suggestion of a miraculous resurrection.10 This general pattern of penance, wonder, and rebirth, common to the last plays, shows Shakespeare reaching for a more religious form of drama. Essentially scandalous to the rationalist and skeptical sensibility, it is rooted in the natural cycle of summer, winter, and spring and the supernatural mystery of passion, death, and resurrection. The ritual pattern of existence in the last plays, particularly the springtime conclusion of The Winter's Tale, directly contradicts the secularized "winter world" of belief in a random, bleak, indifferent, and hopeless universe, the worldview of scientific rationalism such as we find in Bertrand Russell and Sigmund Freud.11

The clearest indication of Shakespeare's discontent with a merely naturalistic worldview lies in the structure of The Winter's Tale. The play is structured very simply. As several critics have pointed out, it falls into three parts. Part one consists of the tragic representation of Leontes' mistaken jealousy, a sinful passion that leads to the death of his son, the apparent death of his wife Hermione, and the rash abandonment of his daughter Perdita. Part two consists of a shift from winter to spring and to the pastoral portrait of Perdita and Florizel in love. Thus far Shakespeare follows his source, Robert Greene's Pandosto. In Part three, however, he departs from Greene's version of the story and adds to it, presenting the wondrous, if not quite miraculous, restoration of Hermione.12 As I shall argue, the significance of this addition is profound in that it gives to The Winter's Tale a religious and supernatural dimension. The merely natural is left behind and Shakespeare ventures into a more spiritual region, the realm of grace.Recent critics have made very little of this religious dimension of the play. It is indeed tempting to conceive of the play as dramatized philosophy and to divide it into two parts consisting of "The Rational" and "The Wondrous." But in fact Leontes is obviously irrational in his jealousy, and it is difficult to see his "rage for knowledge" or to view the first three acts as "consumed with the search for reason, logic, and univocal interpretation," let alone the whole play as a challenge to "epistemological certainty."13 On the contrary, following the Aristotelian distinction between imitation and dramatized discourse,14 I would maintain that the play is not a theological or rationalist allegory, nor a philosophical exploration of

epistemological issues, but a mimetic representation based on penitential ritual, albeit in secular and analogical form, with the aim of producing a final effect of wonder suffused with religious motifs. There is a partial parallel in The Tempest with Prospero in priest-like fashion bringing the characters to a condition of "heart's sorrow" or contrition, but significantly without the element of confession proper to a priest. There is even the restoration of reason, implying a metanoia or interior change of mind, and the restitution of Prospero's dukedom. Even in its elided and analogized form, this sort of pattern is deeply Catholic rather than Protestant in that it imitates the workings of ceremony and ritual rather than imparting knowledge through a discursive statement of the Word.15 Shakespeare does not explicitly "moralize this spectacle" (As You Like It, 2.1.44), but rather he teaches in the sense of moving us through images and ritualized action to virtuous dispositions.Part One: "O thou tyrant"The first part of The Winter's Tale takes on the form of a Greek tragedy, which Shakespeare might have known through the work of Thomas Watson, translator of Sophocles' Antigone.However he came by such knowledge, Shakespeare in part one portrays a tyrant in the throes of the passion of jealousy, with all the paranoia, rigidity, and misperception of a tyrant-king dominated by an exclusive desire. All too obviously the tyrannical Leontes is afflicted with the passion Aquinas calls zelus, that intensity of love on the part of husbands that "vigorously withstands opposition or resistance ... to their exclusive individual rights" (Summa Theologica,1a2ae 28.4).16 As with Desdemona's pleading for Cassio in Othello, Shakespeare manages the representation of Leontes' passion by giving Hermione words that are mildly flirtatious, creating an "objective correlative" that makes the passion somewhat plausible. First Hermione warmly insists on Polixenes' staying in Sicily, and then she equates her consent to marry Leontes with her invitation to Polixenes (1.2.44-87, 106-8). Consequently, Leontes experiences a sudden "tremor cordis," and his confession of it immediately discredits any justification of his jealousy. His passion arises from the misperception of a variety of equivocal actions:                                                                                                    Too hot, too hot!To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances,But not for joy; not joy. This entertainmentMay a free face put on, derive a libertyFrom heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,And well become the agent; 't may--I grant.But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,As now they are, and making practic'd smiles,As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as'twereThe mort o' th' deer--O, that is entertainmentMy bosom likes not, nor my brows!(1.2.108-19)The real truth issues first from Leontes' joyless interpretation of Hermione's heartfelt hospitality, and then from his resistance to the more reasonable comments of those around him. After Leontes admits to his "tremor cordis," Hermione notices that he is "unsettled" and "mov'd" (1.2.147, 150). Camillo advises him to "be cured / Of this diseased opinion" (1.2.296-97), Polixenes notes the change in his character (1.2.364-65), Hermione protests his mistake, and Antigonus and one of the Lords defend her (2.1.81, 100, 127-39). Camillus' remark about the passion being a "diseased opinion" reminds us of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic commonplace distinction between shifting "opinion" and stable "knowledge."17 Both words, together with "truth," are clearly played upon throughout the first part of the play.18 Typically, the autonomous Leontes responds only to his own sense perception, and he resists Camillo's good counsel. With great irony and a touch of hubris, Leontes exults in his autonomous and mistaken "true opinion":                                                                                How blest am IIn my just censure! in my true opinion!Alack, for lesser knowledge! How accurs'dIn being so blest! There may be in the cupA spider steep'd, and one may drink; depart,And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge

Is not infected), but if one presentTh' abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make knownHow he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.(2.1.36-45)Thus, the dynamic that emerges in the course of part one involves a certain epistemological unfolding, beginning with Leontes' passionate misperception, continuing with the court's reasonable testimony, and concluding in the revelation of the oracle. Truth is rooted, not in the autonomous individual, but in the community and a supernatural religious authority.19Somewhat like the skeptical sensibility, Leontes' passion has involved suspicion, distrust, and the rejection of testimony, and it is founded upon a mistaken perception. Hence, Leontes' "true opinion" never receives validation, and the court's assessment is vindicated through the finality of the oracle. The action confirms the revelation of the oracle with the announcement of the death of Mamillius, the apparent demise of Hermione, and Leontes' reversal and confession. In traditional terms, we have a representation of the working of passion, practical reason and divine revelation.More germane to the main action, aside from these epistemological implications, Shakespeare follows up Leontes' jealousy by imitating the penitential movements of contrition, confession, and satisfaction, an important Roman Catholic aspect of the play usually either overlooked or misconstrued.20 The first notice of this occurs early in the play, when Camillo is described by Leontes as having "priest-like ... cleans'd my bosom [so that] I from thee departed / Thy penitent reform'd" (1.2.237-39). Then, after Leontes has accused Hermione, exiled Perdita, and spoken against the oracle, the revelation of the oracle and the death of Mamillius lead him to recognize his "injustice" and to confess with some specificity his sins against Hermione, Polixenes, Camillo, and Apollo:Apollo's angry, and the heavens themselvesDo strike at my injustice. ...I have too much believ'd mine own suspicion.                                                                                          ... Apollo, pardonMy great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle!I'll reconcile me to Polixenes,New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo,Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy;For being transported by my jealousiesTo bloody thoughts, and to revenge, I choseCamillo for the minister to poisonMy friend Polixenes.(3.2.146-47, 151, 153-61)

Paulina berates him by calling attention to the enormous penitential atonement he would need to undertake in order to satisfy for his sins:

                                        A thousand knees,Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,Upon a barren mountain, and still winterIn storm perpetual, could not move the godsTo look that way thou wert.(ll. 210-14)

To which Leontes can only respond with a resolution that he intends to "do penance":

                                        Once a day I'll visitThe chapel where they lie, and tears shed thereShall be my recreation. So long as natureWill bear up with this exercise, so longI daily vow to use it. Come, and lead meTo these sorrows.(ll. 238-43)With this confession, reflecting the movements of contrition, the confession of specific sins, and the resolve to "do penance," we have the essential elements of the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, secularized and rendered analogously in a "pagan" context in order

to observe decorum and avoid an obvious anachronism. Reinforcing the point and adding to the atmosphere of contrition, Paulina makes a parallel confession ("I am sorry for't ... I do repent" 219-24). Finally, the words "chapel" and "vows" further underscore the penitential nature of the scene.21

Transition: "Dreams are toys"With the arrival of Antigonus in Bohemia, followed by three short episodes (involving the Shepherd and Clown, the chorus of Time, and Polixenes and Camillo), Shakespeare makes the transition to the second part of the play.22 The animus against skepticism about the supernatural becomes more evident as Antigonus, carrying the infant Perdita in his arms, discourses on a dream in which Hermione has appeared to him. In a prior scene, he has offered to "pawn the little blood which I have left / To save the innocent" and he has invoked "some powerful spirit" to protect Perdita (2.3.166-67, 186). But then, with the change of scene to Bohemia, Shakespeare shifts course. He has Antigonus ignore the warning of a mariner and a threatening storm, exclaim "[the gods'] wills be done!" (3.3.7) and then suddenly turn somewhat skeptical, only to concede the reality of his dream:I have heard (but not believ'd) the spirits o' th' deadMay walk again. If such thing be, thy motherAppear'd to me last night; for ne'er was dreamSo like a waking.(3.3.16-19)

In his dream, the weeping Hermione has appeared and stated that Antigonus' fate is to act against his "better disposition." She directs him to leave the child and prophesies that he shall never see his wife Paulina again. Antigonus therefore finds himself in a bind as a result of his obedience to Leontes. He has taken an oath to abandon the infant, he thinks that Apollo is in agreement with king Leontes, and he believes that Perdita is the daughter of Polixenes.

                                                                                Dreams are toys,Yet for this once, yea, superstitiously,I will be squar'd [ruled] by this. I do believeHermione hath suffer'd death, and thatApollo would (this being indeed the issueOf King Polixenes) it should here be laid,Either for life or death, upon the earthOf its right father. Blossom, speed thee well!(3.3.39-46)Believing this once in the truth of dreams, Antigonus abandons the child, acting against his own "better disposition," and then is notoriously "pursued by a bear" to be torn apart and eaten offstage. To one skeptical critic, this scene is a "throwaway death" that is "causeless" and an "absolute rejection of verisimilitude."23 Another interpretation with a more psycholanalytic turn would have it that Antigonus is susceptible to illusion, superstitious awe, and psychological projection, and that the play is "self-consciously fictive, flamboyantly theatrical ... make-believe."24 However, these charges simply confirm the truth of Lafeu's remark, quoted above, about "philosophical persons" making modern and familiar "things supernatural and causeless" (All's Well, 2.3.3). Shakespeare did not live after all in a twentieth-century materialistic universe or the world of Freud's The Future of an Illusion. As I shall argue in due course, he clearly distinguishes between the fictitious "make-believe" of "old tales" and the verity of the wonder attendant upon the supernatural.

Of course, it might further be claimed that this scene executes a cruel irony. Antigonus' momentary "superstitious" belief in the dream is followed by his destruction. But in view of the previous action this contention does not hold. First of all, there is a telling contrast between the unfortunate Antigonus and his wife. The play abounds with scenes balancing or counterpointing various figures--the two kings (1.1), Perdita's birth and Mamillius' sickness (2.2-3), the two royal pastoral lovers (4.4), the cynical Autolycus and the credulous Clown (4.3), and the final union of the three pairs of spouses (5.3). Clearly fond of such parallels,

Shakespeare balances the courageous resistance of Paulina, who enters with the newborn Perdita (2.3.26-130), against the reluctant obedience of Antigonus, who at the end of the same scene leaves with the child to abandon it (2.3.131-92). Subsequently, Antigonus carries out Leontes' command and is punished, whereas Paulina subverts it by preserving Hermione and is rewarded.

Again, in the two scenes between the departure of Antigonus from Sicily and his arrival in Bohemia, the oracle informs us of the truth and Leontes admits and repents his mistake. We are aware that Hermione is innocent and Perdita is in fact Leontes' daughter. Upon landing in Bohemia, even the mariner accompanying Antigonus has misgivings about their mission. Antigonus' mistake has been to take the oath and to believe Leontes' allegation against Hermione, in spite of his "better disposition" to believe that Hermione is innocent: "every dram of woman's flesh is false, / If she be" (2.1.138-39). The contrast between husband and wife, the oracle, Leontes' repentance, the mariner's warning, and Antigonus' own disposition, not to mention the act itself of abandoning Perdita, carries us in an undeniable interpretive direction. And in the dream Hermione makes the relevant point:

For this ungentle business,Put on thee by my lord, thou ne'er shalt seeThy wife Paulina more.(3.3.34-36)

Antigonus is mindlessly acting in error against his own nature. Consequently, he is punished by being pursued and torn apart by the bear.

There is clearly some sort of design here. The misfortune of the mindless nobleman who is eaten by a bear is obviously paralleled by the good fortune of the simple Shepherd who finds Perdita and the gold left with her. Thus, the Shepherd's comment that "thou met'st with things dying, I with things newborn" (3.3.113-14). The scene is hardly a "causeless" throwaway, and its verisimilitude depends on what we consider to be "true to nature." Shakespeare views the supernatural as complementary to the natural, not as separate and opposed to it. Thus, the bear does not destroy Antigonus by chance, but, as events from previous scenes suggest, by design as the instrument of the gods.

Essentially, then, Antigonus' dream communicates the sense that "reality" extends beyond nature into the supernatural. The gods are at work in a variety of ways--through the storm, through Antigonus' dream, through the bear, and through the action of "fate." With the death of Antigonus, as with the death of Mamillius, the oracle is fulfilled and a harsh justice is meted out to those who violate the laws of human nature and the will of the gods.

From a more political perspective, the scene subtly delineates positions that conflict with Stuart political orthodoxy, since it favors the notions that uncritical obedience to an absolute monarch is unwarranted, that oaths to a king may conflict with nature and conscience, and that kings are not always in accord with "Apollo." In other words, the scene is difficult to reconcile with the Stuart claims of divine right. Indeed, Paulina launches into a tirade against Leontes using some suggestive imagery:

What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boilingMust I receive, whose every word deservesTo taste of thy most worst?(3.2.175-79)

These words capture precisely the threat that Catholics faced in Jacobean England.

Part Two: "Great creating nature"

In the foregoing transitional scene with the change in setting from Sicily to Bohemia, Shakespeare begins to manage a major dramatic shift. It has been pointed out that the tone changes from tragic to bathetic to comic.25 If the comic tone of the last half of the scene, in which the Shepherd describes Antigonus' death and the wreck of the ship, presents a difficulty, the transitional nature of the scene suggests the solution. With its balance of Antigonus' bizarre death and Perdita's fortunate rescue, the scene first alleviates the sense of the tragic past and then provides some promise for the comic future. Thus it is that subsequently Time announces his intention to bring in "th' freshest things now reigning, and make stale / The glistering of this present" (4.1.13-14). Shakespeare then completes the transition in part two, moving to a pastoral setting and springtime, away from tragedy, the court, and winter. The "winter's tale," which Mamillius has described as a sad tale full of spirits and goblins inspiring fright, implies bleakness and despair. However, with the transition into part two, the play becomes the merry tale his mother prefers (2.1.21-30). The pastoral spring festivities in part two usher in love, life, dancing, song, and regeneration. The dominant figures become Perdita and Autolycus.For the most part, the action is straightforward and simple: a sequence of betrothal, conflict, and escape. What has puzzled commentators is the discourse between Perdita and Polixenes on the relation between nature and art (4.4.79-103).26 Its function in the play is unclear, and if it is not an outright digression, it presents something of a problem. Perdita's argument against growing "gillyvors," or "Nature's bastards," is undercut by her noble character, which is described by Florizel and Polixenes as smacking of "something greater than herself." That is, Perdita is not the base shepherdess she thinks she is, but the noble daughter of Leontes, the "product of careful breeding, of virtuous stock."27 In using the terms "baser" and "nobler" in such a context, Polixenes seems to have the better argument in favor of growing hybrid "gillyvors," since his position in effect supports the impending marriage of the "baser" shepherdess and the "nobler" Florizel:                    You see, sweet maid, we marryA gentler scion to the wildest stock,And make conceive a bark of baser kindBy bud of nobler race. This is an artWhich does mend Nature--change it rather; butThe art itself is Nature.(4.4.92-97)

While A. O. Lovejoy may have exaggerated in seeing here "a devastating comment upon the primitivism of Montaigne," Perdita's position is close to that of Montaigne, and Polixenes' favorable view of art still confines it with the realm of Nature. So also with the reference to "Julio Romano," whose art is "the ape of Nature" (5.2.97-100). As yet, there is no place for art as a gift of grace.

What is clear, it seems, is that in this section of the play everything is centered on nature, either innocent or fallen. The two plot lines suggest this distinction. Perdita speaks of "great creating nature," with no mention of a Creator God (4.4.88). She is a paragon of natural virtue, a queen of the May, the queen of curds and cream (4.4.161). She will wear no makeup (4.4.101). She objects to songs with scurrilous words (4.4.213). Contrary to her innocence, the unregenerate Autolycus remarks "For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it" (4.3.30). He is a rogue, a thief, a comic vice figure, the focal point of natural corruption. He sells ballads that contain manifestly false marvels. He steals and deceives. In this pastoral world, innocence and vice coexist as extremes. In The Tempest (2.1), we have the same contrasting arrangement with the naïve Gonzalo and his cynical companions Sebastian and Antonio. As with fideism and skepticism, each extreme repudiates the other, reducing the world to a univocal principle.In the first and second parts of The Winter's Tale, then, Shakespeare essentially dramatizes his source, following the general design of Robert Greene's Pandosto. Just as in the first half of his novella, Greene describes Pandosto's passion of jealousy and in the second turns to the pastoral mode and the love of Dorastus and Fawnia, so Shakespeare undertakes a

parallel portrayal of Leontes' tragic jealousy, followed by the pastoral scenes depicting the love of Florizel and Perdita. Greene's work ends with the marriage of the two young people and the death of Pandosto. But whereas Greene has Pandosto and his queen die, Shakespeare preserves their counterparts and takes the story in a markedly new direction.

The nature of this new direction becomes apparent when we consider the contrast between parts two and three. Between the two parallel actions involving the royals and the clowns, between the extremes of the innocent, virtuous Perdita and the cynical, unregenerate Autolycus, both of whom reduce all to nature whether innocent or fallen, Shakespeare advances toward the order of grace.

Recalling the last scene of part one, the final scene opens with a more moderate and religious image of Leontes continuing his repentance. As one who is neither innocent nor unregenerate, he in effect strikes a mean between innocent and fallen nature. Since he has sinned and undertaken the long process of regeneration, he brings us into the order of grace. Thus, there are several significant changes in setting in Act 5. We move from the pastoral world of nature into the art-filled world of grace, from a world of shepherds and shepherdesses, flowers, young lovers, dancing satyrs, and spring festivals into a world of penitential regeneration, chapels, statues, good news, miraculous restorations, and marital reunion. Where previously we had seen the anxieties of love, tension between parent and child, and outright trickery, what we see now figures forth the visible and wondrous victory of grace over sin and misfortune--Leontes doing penance, the gentlemen reporting that Perdita is found, Perdita kneeling before her mother's statue, and, most importantly, Paulina "miraculously" restoring Hermione to her husband. If part two concentrates on nature, romantic love, and the breeding of virtuous stock, part three concentrates on art, marital reunion, and spiritual regeneration.

Clearly then, part three (Act 5) constitutes Shakespeare's radical reworking of Greene's tale, in effect transforming its awkward ending, which balances tragedy and pastoral, death and marriage, into a divine comedy concluding with a revelation, restoration, and reunion. Perdita is found, Hermione is revealed to be alive, Paulina is married to Camillo, and the only negative note is the fading memory of the dead Antigonus.Part Three: "Monstrous to our human reason"However, the nature of the final scene needs to be precisely determined. It is possible to describe it in various ways, as miracle, magical conjuration, revelation, resurrection, providential fulfillment, restoration, recovery, and so on. To conceptualize and allegorize here, to translate the action into a mode of logical discourse, would be to produce a rationalist tale, "moralizing the spectacle" in the manner of Jaques (As You Like It, 2.1.44). Everyone agrees that Shakespeare aims at moving us to a sense of wonder. In other words, the final concern is to move an audience to an affective or emotional state, not to "make a statement," allegorical or otherwise. The various motifs of miracle, magic, revelation, etc., contribute to this intention and serve to render it.Critics from Dryden on have objected to the ending's "impossibilities" as "beyond all credibility."28 These are largely rationalistic objections, depending on a reduced sense of what constitutes "nature." Even aside from a more mysterious and religious worldview of oracles and dream visions, there is nothing intrinsically "impossible," after all, about Paulina's concealment of Hermione and "miraculous" revelation of her as being alive. The real problem, therefore, is that the sense of wonder that Shakespeare seeks to evoke conflicts with the rationalist sensibility. Indeed, that sensibility is attacked by Paulina in support of the oracle:For has not the divine Apollo said,Is't not the tenor of his oracle,That King Leontes shall not have an heirTill his lost child be found? Which that it shall,Is all as monstrous to our human reasonAs my Antigonus to break his grave,

And come again to me; who, on my life,Did perish with the infant.(5.1.37-44)

Even if the recovery of Perdita and the "resurrection" of Hermione are "monstrous to our human reason," as they were to Dryden and others, they are what occur "miraculously," albeit not in an absolute sense.

Aware of the incredibility of marvels, Shakespeare in the final two scenes interweaves the motif of "the old tale." In spite of Autolycus' lying ballads (4.4.259-308), and the difficulty of crediting "old tales," Shakespeare establishes the "truth" of wonder and puts us in the mood to believe in marvels. Thus, the Second Gentleman announces that "The oracle is fulfilled; the king's daughter is found," but he also raises some "suspicion": "This news, which is call'd true, is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion. Hath the King found his heir?" (5.2.27-29). The Third Gentleman proceeds to confirm the truth of the report with precisely detailed evidence:Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance. That which you hear you'll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione's; her jewel about the neck of it; the letters of Antigonus found with it, which they know to be his character; the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother; the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding; and many other evidences proclaim her, with all certainty, to be the King's daughter.(5.2.30-40)

And Paulina, upon the revelation that Hermione is alive, comments:

                                                            That she is living,Were it but told you, should be hooted atLike an old tale.(5.3.115-17)

In spite of his consciousness of the incredibility of what is represented in ballads and "old tales," then, Shakespeare validates the sense of wonder and discredits suspicion and skepticism. Leontes' jealous suspicion in part one is "ill ta'en" (1.2.460), "too much believ'd" (3.2.151), and finally "ill" (5.3.149). Similarly, in part three any initial incredulity attaching to Perdita's recovery and Hermione's return disintegrates with the revelation of the truth. The disarming of "suspicion" by reason and revelation thematically unifies parts one and three. The wonder of oracular revelation and of old tales receives verification and validation, whereas suspicion is rooted in "opinion, which is rotten / As ever oak or stone was sound" (2.390-91).

So also with Leontes' penitential action linking the end of part one with the beginning of part three. A recent editor has raised structural questions of a rationalistic nature:

Why does [Shakespeare] set up the powerful tragic momentum of the opening three acts, only to disarm it with fantasy and magic? Why is not Mamillius not restored, along with Hermione and Perdita. ... Perhaps most puzzling of all, why does Shakespeare preserve Leontes and ultimately exonerate him [?]29

These questions are resolved if we take the play as partially constructed along the lines of penitential movements, which preserve the continuity between parts one and three. The "tragic momentum" of part one logically continues if we attend to the penitential character of its conclusion. Thus Mamillius dies as punishment for Leontes' sins (indeed, even because of Leontes' accusation of Hermione; see 2.3.9-17; 3.2.144-45). And Shakespeare must preserve and exonerate Leontes as the central figure in the penitential process that ends in the wonder of restoration. If we assume an order of grace governing the action, the penitential movements we see in Leontes--his sorrowful reflections on his past sins, his sixteen year atonement and his final appeal for pardon--understandably end in the reward of restoration. The process is comically reflected in Autolycus' opportunistic regrets about his past life, coupled with an appeal to the Clown for pardon and a promise to amend his life (5.2.113-54). He does this of course in hope of the grace of preferment: "Now, had I not a

dash of my former life in me, would preferment drop on my head" (5.2.113-14). The contrast between the two characters may even suggest the contrast between the Roman Catholic and Church of England conceptions of repentance, the one requiring "doing penance" and the other mere "amendment of life."

Along with other critics, then, I would suggest that the ending is structured in a manner analogous to a miracle play, with Paulina taking the place of the Virgin Mary or Christ in producing a wonder-filled "miracle." Strikingly similar elements exist in at least one miracle play, Le Miracle de Saint Jehan le Paulu, Hermite, which includes a sexual sin and murder, a long period of penance, prayer to the Virgin, and a victim miraculously restored to life.30Shakespeare, of course, was forced by historical circumstance to secularize the form, but nevertheless his plays, like most Elizabethan-Jacobean theater, still contain religious elements.31 The various religious motifs and gestures in The Winter's Tale play an important part in preparing and shaping our responses to the final "miracle": specifically, the penitential movements, the indications of providential fulfillment, the veneration of the statue, the allusion to the chapel, and the suggestions of revelation and resurrection. Three of these motifs carry over from part one. At the end of part one, Leontes resolves to do penance and to visit the "chapel" where his supposedly dead wife and son are entombed (3.2.234-43). In part two, with the passage of time and the introduction of Perdita and Florizel, Leontes is twice referred to as that "penitent king" (4.2.6, 22), and part three more fully renders and enacts this image. Thus, after sixteen years have passed, Act V opens with Leontes still continuing his penance:Sir, you have done enough, and have perform'dA saint-like sorrow. No fault could you makeWhich you have not redeem'd; indeed paid downMore penitence than done trespass.(5.1.1-4)

This is of course a Catholic conception of penance as satisfaction "paid down" for one's sins. From Leontes' court we move on to the final scene, which takes place in Paulina's "remov'd house" (5.2.107; 5.3.6), with the characters proceeding through the "gallery" (5.3.10) to the "chapel" (l. 86) where the statue of Hermione stands. Before it Perdita kneels and asks its blessing, an action strongly resembling prayer before a statue of the Virgin Mary and constituting "idolatry" in Protestant eyes:

                                                            And give me leave,And do not say 'tis superstition, thatI kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady,Dear queen, that ended when I but began,Give me that hand of yours to kiss.(ll. 42-46)

Again, as with Antigonus, the charge of superstition is discredited by Perdita's moving filial sentiment. Following Perdita's religious gesture, Leontes' sorrow and grief are once more brought to our attention by Camillo:

My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on,Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,So many summers dry. Scarce any joyDid ever so long live; no sorrowBut kill'd itself much sooner.(ll. 49-53)

This note of repentance continues to be repeated throughout the scene. Leontes is "asham'd" (l. 37), "wrought" (l. 58), "stirr'd" (l. 74), "afflicted" (ll. 75, 76), and finally desirous of "pardons" from Polixenes and Hermione (l. 147).

In this religious setting, the theme of providential fulfillment also supports the sense of wonder. The parallel between scenes two and three of Act 5 strongly suggests that Shakespeare worked by careful design. The discovery that Perdita is Leontes' long lost daughter comes to us by report and is not visually enacted onstage. But contrariwise Shakespeare then proceeds to visually enact onstage the parallel revelation that Hermione is alive. Both events provide confirmation of the truth of the oracle. The second Gentleman exclaims "The oracle is fulfill'd; the King's daughter is found" (5.2.22-23), and Hermione herself calls attention to the providential nature of her daughter's preservation (5.3.121-28).

Shakespeare in addition deftly plays upon the notion of miracle by carefully setting up Hermione's "resurrection." Deliberately misleading his audience, he early on has Paulina swear that Hermione is dead (3.2.203) and then Antigonus dreams that she has died (3.3.41-2). Later, as we approach the final scene, he has her death mentioned again by Leontes, the second Gentleman, and Paulina (5.1.16-20, 95-98; 5.2.106; 5.3.14-15). More immediately in the final scene, Paulina reveals Hermione's "statue," and, alluding slightly to the Resurrection, she declares "Bequeath to death your numbness; for from him / Dear life redeems you" (5.3.102-3). Thus it appears Hermione is resurrected. We do not know she has really been kept alive until she steps down from her pedestal and Polixenes wonders "where she has liv'd / Or how stolen from the dead" (5.3.113-14). In the previous scene, the second Gentleman has made an offhand mention of Paulina's private visits to "that remov'd house" (5.2.105-7), but only at the last does the "resurrected" Hermione explain that she has "preserv'd" herself (5.3.125-28). Indeed, this rather slight explanation is made in passing so that the wonder of the "resurrection" is not compromised by an extended naturalistic explanation.32

Shakespeare also plays upon the notion of magic. When Paulina begins her revelation, she proceeds as a kind of magus and talks in terms of magic with allusions to religion. She bids all "awake your faith" (l. 95). She insists she is not aided by "wicked powers" (l. 91), that what she is about is not "unlawful business" (l. 96), that Hermione's actions "shall be holy" (l. 104), and that her "spell is lawful" (l. 105). Leontes cries out "If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating" (ll. 110-11). In such a context, this extremely strange simile brings to mind the legal prohibition against celebration of the Mass, an eating of the body of Christ which was considered magic by the Reformers.

But outweighing the motifs of resurrection and magic is the simple fact that Hermione has not died and is simply revealed to be alive. Although Shakespeare is clearly striving to produce an effect of wonder, Hermione is not resurrected, nor is she miraculously or magically brought back from death. Her resurrection is only metaphorical. Rather action, gesture, verbal allusion, and setting all serve to convey a sense of miraculous restoration and reconciliation. And restoration and reconciliation, the terminal states toward which penance is directed, would seem to be the more appropriate words. Early on, the notion of reconciliation is suggested by Leontes, when he first repents and resolves to return things to the way they were before:

                                                                      Apollo, pardonMy great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle!I'll reconcile me to Polixenes,New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo.(3.2.153-56)

It is repeated when Polixenes refers to him as "that penitent and reconcil'd king" (4.2.22-23). Then, in the final act, the note of restoration sounds when the prospect of Leontes' remarriage is called by Dion "royalty's repair" (5.1.31), and its full realization occurs in the reunion with Hermione.

In short, the various supporting motifs of providential fulfillment, resurrection, and magic serve to build subtly toward the sense of wonder, concluding with the marvelous revelation that Hermione is alive. Both Hermione and Perdita are restored and reconciled with Leontes. There is a clear parallel in The Tempest, when Prospero restores the senses of his enemies, brings them to repentance, and regains his kingdom (5.1.25-31, 134). There too Shakespeare provides motifs of pardon (ll. 119, 293-296), providential fulfillment (ll. 189, 201-4, 242-45), and reconciliation (ll. 25-28, 130-32).To sum up, if we take The Winter's Tale in Aristotle's sense as an "imitation of an action," we can perceive the unity of its plot as resting on a series of penitential movements, beginning with Leontes' sinful passion of jealousy, and proceeding through his contrition, confession, and attempt to make satisfaction, counterpointed by Perdita and Hermione being "lost" (in part one) and then "found" (in parts two and three). All this is designed to bring about a final wondrous sense of restoration and reconciliation, decisively beyond the merely natural conclusion of Greene's tale. In any case, Shakespeare's discrediting of suspicion and his validation of "superstition" and the marvelous, puts him at considerable distance from formal skepticism. Indeed it is doubtful that Shakespeare was much concerned with philosophical skepticism, since the word "skeptic" does not occur in his work, and his concern with wonder conflicts with the skeptical temperament. So too with the Calvinist sensibility.33 As Michael O'Connell has pointed out, "In its quasi-religious enactment, the [final] scene appears to realize the worst fears of the anti-theatrical writers: it presses its audience into idolatry ... Shakespeare does not counter, finally, but embraces the charge of idolatry."34 Indeed, Shakespeare's final scene, with its chapel and statue, runs clearly contrary to the grain of what the Elizabethan "Homily Against Perill of Idolatry" considers proper to a Church:True Religion then and pleasing of GOD, standeth not in making, setting vp, painting, gilding, clothing and decking of dumbe and dead images (which bee but great puppets and babies for old fooles in dotage, and wicked idolatrie, to dally and play with) nor in kissing of them, capping, kneeling, offering to them, in sensing of them, setting vp of candles, hanging vp of legges, armes, or whole bodies of waxe before them, or praying, and asking of them or of Saints, things belonging onely to GOD to giue. But all these things bee vaine and abominable, and most damnable before GOD.[II.2.3.2925-33]35

The final Act, then, shows Shakespeare departing from his source and shaping the action in a "spiritual" direction, namely, in the direction of the penitential, the wondrous, and the miraculous. On three counts, with the penitential movements unifying the action, with the idolatrous veneration of a statue, and with the representation of a virtual miracle onstage, Shakespeare violates the tenets of the Church of England. While his art does not concern itself with explicitly putting forward religious doctrines, it bases itself on religious ritual and strives for a religious effect, wonder at the restoration that follows on "doing penance." His sensibility is neither rationalist, nor skeptical nor Church of England. It is clearly Roman Catholic.

Notes1. All quotations of Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).2. For the classic account of sixteenth-century skepticism, see Richard Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, Calif.: University California Press, 1979), and also his chapter on "Theories of Knowledge" in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 668-84.

3. It might be argued that Prospero's subsequent promise to explain what Alonzo finds mysterious suggests that human reason can "resolve" all wonders, but it is clear that Prospero is the instrument of providence whose art (a gift of grace) works wonders beyond nature and the capacity of human reason.

4. For skepticism as therapy rather than philosophy, see Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

5. Popkin, xviii-xix.

6. In The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, ed. Marvin Spevack (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), there are fourteen references to "oracle," three to "Delphos" (2.1.183; 2.3.196; 3.2.126), three to "Jove" (2.3.126; 4.4.16; 3.1.10), eight to "Apollo" (esp. 4.4.25-31), ten to "gods," and two to "Fate" (3.3.28; 4.4.20). See also 4.4.25-31, 116-25.

7. The references are as follows: original sin (1.2.69-75), churchyard (2.1.30), heresy (2.3.115-16), providence (3.1.14-15; 3.2.28-29, 131ff.; 3.3.4-6; 4.4.46; 5.1.35-40, 203-4; 5.3.121-23, 150), redemption (5.2.15), Judas Iscariot (1.2.419), the future life (4.3.30), Whitsunday (4.4.134), and hell (4.4.553).

8. The Roman Catholic references are as follows: penance (1.2.235-39; 5.1.1-4), penitential fasting (3.2.210-12), guardian angel (2.3.127, 186), merit (3.2.48; 5.1.175), spirits walking again (3.3.16; 5.1.57-60, 63-67), sign of the cross (3.3.113), kneeling before statues (5.3.44), miracles (5.3.94-111), and prayers for dead (5.3.140-41).

9. See also S. L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale: A Study (London: Staples Press, 1947), 37-40, 76-104.10. Thus the Council of Trent says "Those who through sin have forfeited the received grace of justification, can again be justified when, moved by God, they exert themselves to obtain through the sacrament of penance the recovery [recuperare], by the merits of Christ, of the grace lost. For this manner of justification is restoration for those fallen [lapsi reparatio]" (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder [St. Louis: Herder, 1941], 39 [Sixth Session, ch. 14]).11. See Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship" in Why I Am Not a Christian (London: 1903), and Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (1927; New York: Doubleday, 1953), ch. 3. More recent examples of this worldview occur in Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, both of whom testify against Russell and Freud by making nature more wondrous.12. Louis Martz, "Shakespeare's Humanist Enterprise: The Winter's Tale," in English Renaissance Studies Presented to Dame Helen Gardner in honour of her Seventieth Birthday (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1980): 123-24. For an alternative view of the structure as twofold, see Northrup Frye, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 113-17.13. Peter Platt, Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous (Lincoln, Nebr.: University Nebraska Press, 1997), 153.14. See R. S. Crane, The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1953), and Richard Levin, New Readings vs. Old Plays: Recent Trends in the Reinterpretation of English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1979).15. See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 530-32. See also Platt, 19.16. All quotations of Aquinas are from Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger, 1947).17. See for example Plato's Republic, Bks. 6-7, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 6.3-11. For the Stoics, see Geoffrey Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1996), 10-11, 63-82. Contemporary criticism has taken an epistemological turn foreign to this tradition. See Howard Felperin's oft reprinted essay "'Tongue-tied, our

Queen?': The Deconstruction of Presence in The Winter's Tale," in The Uses of the Canon: Elizabethan Literature and Contemporary Theory (Oxford U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1990), 35-55, and also Platt, 153-68.

18. See "opinion" at 1.2.297, 2.1.37, 2.3.90; "knowledge" at 1.1.12, 1.2.395, 2.1.38, 2.1.97, 2.2.2, 3.1.21; and "truth" at 2.1.167, 193, 199; 2.3.201; 3.2.85, 138, 140, 157, 233.

19. For a contrary view, see Felperin's essay, in which the oracle is seen as "unstable." However, Felperin's reading is based on two inadequate assumptions. One that the natural and supernatural are separate and non-complementary: thus Mamillius' death is "the result of natural rather than supernatural causes" (as though the supernatural cannot operate through the natural). Compare, for example, All's Well That Ends Well, 2.1.136-37, 175-76 andPericles, 5.3.56-61. The other is that Shakespeare's "world of interpretation" consists of Leontes, the producer, and the audience, a position that omits the correcting views of the other characters (especially Camillo and Antigonus).20. Bethell does not mention its Catholic nature; R. G. Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) misconstrues it as "Anglican" orthodoxy (20, 244).21. Thus far, The Winter's Tale presents us with a self-contained Greek tragedy, complete with tyrant, passionate mistake, arrogant rejection of an oracle, and punishment. There is a clear resemblance, for example, to Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and to Euripides' The Bacchae. The abandonment of a child and its rescue by a shepherd in part two provide further parallels as evidence.

22. See the analysis in Martz, 124.

23. Rosalie Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 268.24. Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 200-4.

25. See Bethell 64-65.

26. See Harold S. Wilson, "Nature and Art in The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare Association Bulletin 18 (1943): 114-20, reprinted in Kenneth Muir's casebook, Shakespeare: The Winter'sTale (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 151-58.27. The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), xxxv.28. Quoted in Stephen Orgel, ed., The Winter's Tale (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1.

29. Ibid., 6.

30. See Hunter, 26-31.

31. See Michael O'Connell, "The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm, Anti-Theatricalism, and the Image of the Elizabethan Theater," ELH 52 (1985): 307; revised as part of chapter 5 in The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm & Theater in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

32. On the miraculous, Shakespeare seems to be close to Aquinas, who says "The word miracle is derived from admiration, which arises when an effect is manifest, whereas its cause is hidden ... Now the cause of a manifold effect may be known to one, but unknown to others. Wherefore a thing is wonderful to one man and not at all to others: as an eclipse is to a rustic, but not to an astronomer" (1a 105.7). And further, bringing in the notions of magic,

the magus and daemons, reminding us of Paulina, Prospero and Ariel, Aquinas says elsewhere "But as we do not know all the power of created nature, it follows that when anything is done outside the order of created nature by a power unknown to us, it is called a miracle as regards ourselves. ... In this way the magicians work miracles through the demons" (1a 110.4). Paulina works a wondrous effect whose natural cause is known to her but not to the others. Likewise, Prospero works wonderful effects through the daemon Ariel, but the cause is not known to Alonso and his group. Note also 2a2ae 178.2: "Some miracles are not true but imaginary deeds, because they delude man by the appearance of that which is not; while others are true deeds, yet they have not the character of a true miracle, because they are done by the power of some natural cause."

33. See Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford L. Battles, ed. John T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.11.12. Calvin of course is also against "superstition." For an interesting attempt at a Calvinist reading, see Grace Tiffany, "Calvinist Grace in Shakespeare's Romances: Upending Tragedy," Christianity and Literature49 (2000): 421-45.

34. O'Connell, "The Idolatrous Eye," 305.

35. See also the "Injunctions of 1559" (nos. 2, 23, and 35), which legislate against images, relics and miracles, and Article XXII of the "Thirty-Nine Articles": "Purgatory, Pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saint, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture; but rather repugnant to the word of God."

Source Citation   (MLA 7th Edition)

Beauregard, David N. "Shakespeare against the Skeptics: Nature and Grace in The Winter's Tale." Shakespeare's Last

Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics. Ed. Stephen W. Smith and Travis Curtright. Lanham, Md.: Lexington

Books, 2002. 53-72. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2006.Literature

Resource Center. Web. 15 May 2013.

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