"Standing in Rich Place": The Importance of Context in The Winter's Tale

"Standing in Rich Place": The Importance of Context in The Winter's Tale Maurice Hunt Baylor University When Isabel Archer surprises Madam Merle and Gilbert Osmund in a drawing room, she intuits an abruptly imposed silence.1 Considered by itself, the stillness is not remarkable. It is Madame Merle's standing by the fireplace while Osmund lounges in a deep chair that makes the silence so suggestive. This unusual tableau first causes Isabel to suspect that her husband's and friend's relationship may be more familiar than she imagined. Often in James's novels, social contexts — or more precisely, violations of them — give statements, and even silences, their special imports. Every reader has his or her favorite scenes demonstrating the importance of context for meaning; examples might be multiplied indefinitely. By identifying the different contexts which an author imposes upon his or her characters, their speeches, and episodes in general, we are obviously aided in interpreting a novel or play. This observation especially applies to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.2 The Ceres-Persephone myth, the conventions of Renaissance pastoral, the Last Judgment, the Christian soul's pilgrimage to salvation, the Art versus Nature debate — these are only a few of the topics that supply contexts for the evaluation of a 1.Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (New York: The New American Library, 1963), pp. 376-377. 2.The manner in which context creates meaning in Shakespeare's plays and poems has become a critical subject. "In the Reynaldo scene (Il.i.) and Hamlet's first talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," Stephen Booth notes, "the power of rhetoric and context to make a particular either good or bad at will is also a topic in the play" ("On the Value of Hamlet," in Reinterpretations ofElizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], p. 172). Booth systematically applies this observation about context to Hamlet, revealing how the tragedy's fluctuating values emerge from manipulated dramatic contexts. "Contextualism" has been defined as a critical principle by Murray Krieger, who has shown how the artistic contexts of Shakespeare's sonnets produce their singular meanings (A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964], pp. 28-70). 14ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW word, statement, or scene in this late dramatic romance.3 The Parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, does provide a setting for Autolycus's fleecing of the Clown; and the viewer does become aware of the supreme virtue — charity — against which farce should be measured.4 Once critics have defined the contexts suggested by the language and dramatic action of The Winter's Tale, they most often explain how the contexts either stress a certain design in the play or provoke a particular attitude in the theater audience.5 In her study of tragicomic dramaturgy, Joan Hartwig, for instance, implicitly appeals to the viewer's contextual knowledge of The Winter's Tale.6 The play's tragicomic effects 3.The Ceres-Persephone myth has been discussed in relation to the play by F. David Hoeniger, "The Meaning of The Winter's Tale," University of Toronto Quarterly, 20 (1950), 21-23; Renaissance pastoral by Jerry H. Bryant, "The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Tradition," Shakespeare Quarterly, 14 (1963), 387-394; and by Philip M. Weinstein, "An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 97-109; the iconography of Time by Inga-Stina Ewbank, "The Triumph of Time in The Winter's Tale," in The Winter's Tale: A Casebook, ed. Kenneth Muir (1969; rpt. Nashville: Aurora, 1970), p. 106; the Last Judgment by Charles Frey, "Interpreting The Winter's Tale," Studies in English Literature, 18 (1978), 325; The Christian soul's pilgrimage by Douglas L. Peterson, Time, Tide, and Tempest: A Study of Shakespeare's Romances (San Marino: The Huntington Library Press, 1973), pp. 160-161; the Art vs. Nature debate by Harold S. Wilson, '"Nature and Art' in Winter's Tale IV.iv.86ff.," Shakespeare Association Bulletin, 18 (1943), 114-120; by Edward William Tayler, Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 133-138; and by Peter Lindenbaum...