6 - “Your speak a language that I understand not”: the rhetoric of animation in The Winter's Tale

Summary

Between Leontes' opening imperative, “Tongue-tied our queen? Speak you” (1.2.28) and the final act, where Hermione as living statue returns to her husband yet says nothing directly to him, The Winter's Tale traces a complex, fascinated, and uneasy relation to female speech. A play much noted for interrogating the “myriad forms of human narration” – old tales, reports, ballads, oracles – The Winter's Tale begins its investigation of language when Hermione tellingly jests to Polixenes:

Verily,

You shall not go; a lady's “verily” is

As potent as a lord's.

(1.2.49–51)

Leontes' swift turn to suspicion hinges on the power of his wife's speech. Unable to persuade Polixenes to stay, he first expresses annoyance when Hermione is able to do so. Polixenes has just assured his boyhood friend, “There is no tongue that moves, none, none i' th' world, / So soon as yours could win me” (1.2.20–21). Nonetheless, it is Hermione's tongue, not her husband's, that “wins” Polixenes. “You, sir, / Charge him too coldly,” she chides Leontes before persuading their friend to stay (1.2.29–30). Leontes therefore moves quickly from “well said, Hermione” to churlish acknowledgment of her rhetorical power. He understands her persuasive speech not as obedience to his desire – since he is the one who commanded, “speak you” – but as a force that eclipses his own:

leontes: Is he won yet?

hermione: He'll stay, my lord.

leontes: At my request he would not.

(1.2.86–87)

From her success, jealous deductions quickly follow.