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Debates

The statue

While the language Paulina uses in the final scene evokes the sense of a magical ritual, one often-overlooked moment in 5.2 shows us the far likelier case – that Paulina hid Hermione at a remote location to protect her from Leontes' wrath and that the re-animation of Hermione does not derive from any magic. When the Third Gentleman announces that the members of the court have gone to Paulina's dwelling to see the statue, the Second Gentleman offers this exposition: "I thought she had some great matter there in hand, for she [Paulina] hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house" (5.2.104–106). What's more, Leontes is surprised that the statue is wrinkled, unlike the Hermione he remembers. Paulina answers his concern by claiming that the age-progression attests to the "carver's excellence", which makes her look "as [if] she lived now." Hermione later asserts that her desire to see her daughter allowed her to endure 16 years of sequestration. Hermione, after her unveiling, says to Perdita, "thou shalt hear that I, / Knowing by Paulina that the oracle / Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved / Myself to see the issue" (5.3.126–129)

The seacoast of Bohemia

Shakespeare's fellow playwright Ben Jonson ridiculed the presence in the play of a seacoast and a desert in Bohemia, since the kingdom of Bohemia (which roughly corresponds to the modern-day Czech Republic) had neither a coast (being landlocked) nor a desert.^[16][17] Shakespeare's source, the romance Pandosto by Robert Greene, had the shipwreck instead take place on the Sicilian coast.^[18] However, in the 13th century under Ottokar II of Bohemia the kingdom of Bohemia did stretch to the Adriatic, and it was, in fact, possible to sail from a kingdom of Sicily to the seacoast of Bohemia.^[19] Moreover, in Shakespeare's time, Rudolph, king of Bohemia, also was Holy Roman Emperor and ruled over the Adriatic coast neighboring the Venetian Republic, a fact noted by some Oxfordian scholars [See: authorship], who find it significant that the Earl of Oxford was traveling in the Adriatic region during this brief span of time. Jonathan Bate offers the simple explanation that the court of King James was politically allied with that of Rudolph, and the characters and dramatic roles of the rulers of Sicily and Bohemia were reversed for reasons of political sensitivity. Indeed, had not Shakespeare made this departure from his sources the play's performance at the wedding celebrations of Princess Elizabeth, a future queen of Bohemia, could not have taken place.^[20]

In 1891, Edmund O. von Lippmann pointed out that "Bohemia" was also a rare name for Apulia in southern Italy.^[21] More influential was Thomas Hanmer's 1744 argument that Bohemia is a printed error for Bithynia, an ancient nation in Asia Minor;^[22] this theory was adopted in Charles Kean's influential nineteenth century production of the play, which featured a resplendent Bythinian court.

The pastoral genre is not known for precise verisimilitude, and, like the assortment of mixed references to ancient religion and contemporary religious figures and customs, this possible inaccuracy may have been included to underscore the play's fantastical and chimeric quality. As Andrew Gurr puts it, Bohemia may have been given a seacoast "to flout geographical realism, and to underline the unreality of place in the play".^[23]

Another theory explaining the existence of the seacoast in Bohemia is suggested in Shakespeare's chosen title of the play. A winter's tale is something associated with parents telling children stories of legends around a fireside: by using this title it is implying to the audience not to take these details too seriously.^[24]

The Isle of Delphos

Likewise, Shakespeare's apparent mistake of placing the Oracle of Delphi on a small island has been used as evidence of Shakespeare's limited education. However, Shakespeare again copied this locale directly from "Pandoste". Moreover, the erudite Robert Greene was not in error, as the Isle of Delphos does not refer to Delphi, but to the Cycladic island of Delos, the mythical birth place of Apollo, which from the 15th to the late 17th century in England was known as "Delphos"^[25]. Greene's source for an Apollonian oracle on this island likely was the Aeneid, in which Virgil wrote that Priam consulted the Oracle of Delos before the outbreak of the Trojan War and that Aeneas after escaping from Troy consulted the same Delian oracle regarding his future.^[26].

Dildos

One comic moment in the play deals with a servant not realizing that poetry featuring references to dildos is vulgar, presumably from not knowing what the word means. This play and Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist (1610) are typically cited as the first usage of the word in publication.^[27] The Alchemist was printed first, but the debate about the date of the play's composition makes it unclear which was the first scripted use of the word, which is, of course, much older.^[28]