Seasonal Associations

Despite Mamillius’ warning that a “sad tale’s best for winter,” Shakespeare includes other seasons within his play that doesn’t necessarily reflect sadness. The first half of the play indeed takes place during the gloomy months of winter. The icy season/setting seems well-fitted as it highlights the tragic hero, King Leontes’s cold heart. Unlike the first half of the play where we see Leontes’s cold behavior (as he tears apart his family), later on we see how the seasons change with the temperature of the play itself (from cold setting to warm ending). In other words, it’s interesting to see how the play’s title, The Winter’s Tale, leaves room for the reader to imagine a dual meaning—one that is a harsh, chilly and dark story (interpreted as more of a “sad tale”), and another part that is more fairy-tale, happy-ending- like. In the second half of the play, the Spring and Summer seasons set in, which allows us to read into the multiple layers and different meanings this play holds as these seasons are typically associated with life and regeneration. While we can see how Leontes’s character may represent the coldness of winter, we also see how the young Perdita can embody the warmth and life of Spring and Summer. Decorated in flowers, she can easily be linked to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, or Proserpina, Roman goddess of spring and growth. She also encapsulates young love as the lovely, faultless Perdita and Florizel eventually meet and fall in love with each other (in Bohemia where their love blossoms). On a side note, I can’t help but recall the story of Sleeping Beauty. I remember how at the beginning of the story, Aurora—the new born princess—is cursed to death by her sixteenth birthday by an evil fairy. Later on in the story, however, she finds and falls in love with a prince (who she was destined to wed) while being unaware of her own royal lineage. At the end, Aurora learns of her royal status, marries her prince, and is reunited with her family (which is quite similar to Perdita’s ending). These are only a few similarities, but in this way, Perdita is an Aurora, fairy-tale like heroine; that is, she is a princess (raised in the countryside) and brought up to think that she is a commoner, who eventually falls in love with a prince and lives “happily ever after.” In a sense, this echoes how Perdita and Florizel found each other, in addition to how the story switches from a dark tone to a lighter one (emphasizing the fairytale-like element of Shakespeare’s play).

Ultimately, the seasons play a significant role representing not only change, but serving as a metaphor for a journey (developmental stages of life, the characters’ growth, and even the play itself). Overall, Mamillius was only partially correct as he promised to tell his mother a sad tale. However, at the end, the reader learns that the best winter story isn’t a sad one, but instead, a tale that concludes with the hope and promise of spring.