Alexander might have chosen any one of the generals and his dying vote might have fixed that general in the throne and brought about the consolidation of the new and gigantic Macedonian Empire, changing the history of the world. Unfortunately, Alexander (for whatever reason) is supposed to have said, with his last breath, "To the strongest" when asked to whom he left his Empire.
If there had been a strongest, that would have been well, but there wasn't. No one general was strong enough to defeat and dominate all the rest. The result was that for thirty years a civil war raged among the generals. At the end, Alexander's Empire was worn out and fragmented. The fragments continued to war against each other with the result that within three centuries of Alexander's death, the eastern half of his Empire was retaken by native tribes and the western half was taken by Rome.
Surely this is not the fate for Sicily that Paulina was urging on Leontes.
In fact, she has other plans. She urges Leontes to vow never to marry anyone not chosen by herself. Leontes, who can never punish himself sufficiently, agrees.
Florizel is now introduced, arriving in Sicily with Perdita. Leontes greets the young man tearfully and inquires, with wonder, of the beautiful Perdita. Florizel, attempting to mask the truth as deeply as possible, says:
—Act V, scene i, lines 156-57
Libya was the name given by the ancient Greeks to the entire north African coast west of Egypt. The two chief cities of Libya in the time of Dionysius of Syracuse were Cyrene, a Greek city five hundred miles to the southeast of Sicily, and Carthage, a non-Greek city, a hundred miles to the southwest.
Events hasten now. Even while Florizel is embroidering his lie by making Perdita the daughter of a Libyan king, news arrives that Polixenes and Camillo are in Sicily. Polixenes sends a message demanding the arrest of Florizel.
However, the audience need not be alarmed. It is at once revealed that the Shepherd and the Clown are also in Sicily and they can reveal the truth of Perdita's identity.
What happens next is offstage. We would think that there should be a grand reconciliation scene as Perdita is shown to be Leontes' daughter, and there is, but not onstage. We learn of it only through a discussion among three Gentlemen.
This is odd and we might speculate that in the original form of the play the recognition and restoration of Perdita was the climax. Perhaps this ending turned out to be weak-after all, a very similar climax had been used only a year or two before by Shakespeare in Pericles (see page I-199). Pressure might have been applied to Shakespeare to make some alteration in that ending.
As a result, Shakespeare thrust Perdita's recognition offstage and prepared an even more dramatic scene involving Queen Hermione.
Paulina had reported her dead in Act III, and there has been no hint since that the report was wrong. Indeed, at the end of Act III, when An-tigonus is taking the little baby girl off to exposure, he dreams that Hermione's ghost appears to him, and this would make it seem that Shakespeare really did consider her dead.
Shakespeare, in his revision (assuming there was one), did not trouble to go back and put in some indication of Hermione's remaining alive, nor does he expunge the reference to the ghost, which is useful in explaining the name "Perdita."
Instead, he begins at this late date in the fifth act to start preparing the audience. The Third Gentleman mentions, for the first time, a statue:
—Act V, scene ii, lines 101-5
Julio Romano was a real Italian artist, known for his painting rather than for his sculpture, who had died in 1546, a little over half a century before The Winter's Tale was written. This is a startling anachronism, of course.
The Second Gentleman adds another vital item in the new build-up. Concerning Paulina, he says:
—Act V, scene ii, lines 113-15
Of course, the statue turns out to be the living Hermione after all. Why she has been kept from the so repentant King for sixteen years and been condemned to a life of solitary imprisonment; why Paulina has undertaken the backbreaking task of feeding and caring for her and keeping the secret; why the King has not had curiosity to see the progress of the statue during all the "many years" in which it was being made-these points are not explained. All this lack of explanation lends substance to the theory that the last half of the fifth act is a new ending, patched on imperfectly.
There is the final reconciliation scene and all ends in happiness. Paulina (who has now learned of her husband's death) marries Camillo, and even the Shepherd and the Clown now find themselves enriched, so that Au-tolycus, swearing to reform, is taken under their protection.
7. The Comedy Of Errors
The comedy of errors may possibly be the very first play Shakespeare wrote, perhaps even as early as 1589.
It is a complete farce, and it is adapted from a play named Menaechmi, written by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus about 220 b.c. If we assume that the events in Plautus' play reflect the time in which it was written (although Plautus borrowed the plot from a still earlier Greek play) we can place the time a century and a half after that of Dionysius of Syracuse. It is for that reason I place this play immediately after The Winter's Tale.
Plautus' play Menaechmi tells of the comic misadventures of twin brothers separated at birth. One searches for the other and when he reaches the town in which the second dwells, finds himself greeted by strangers who seem to know him. There are constant mistakes and cross-purposes, to the confusion of everyone on the stage and to the delight of everyone in the audience.
Shakespeare makes the confusion all the more intense by giving the twin brothers each a servant, with the servants twins as well. The developments are all accident, all implausible, and-if well done-all funny.
The play begins seriously enough in Ephesus. Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, appears onstage, with Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse. The title "Duke of Ephesus" is as anachronistic as "Duke of Athens" (see page I-18) and with even less excuse, since there never was a Duchy of Ephesus in medieval times as there was, at least, a Duchy of Athens.