The Winter's Tale and Ideology

DOI Web Site
  • OTA Kazuaki
    Division of English Language, School of Medicine, University of Occupational and Environmental Health

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Other Title
  • 『冬物語』とイデオロギー

Abstract

The present paper examines the ideological implications of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In so doing it assumes the theater where Shakespeare's romances were produced functioned as one of the important, though not necessarily reliable, ideological apparatuses of the Jacobean monarchist state. The Winter's Tale affirms the validity and legitimacy of the monarchical and patriarchal system of Sicilia: it demonstrates that Sicilia is capable of standing whatever crises it has to undergo and that the state order, reinforced after a series of serious crises, assures people's happiness. The development of the play's action, which is precisely the fulfillment of the Apollo's oracle, suggests that Sicilia's order is decreed by God－immutable, unchangeable or simply natural. The performance of the play legitimating and mythologizing monarchy as well as patriarchy was an ideological practice serving to maintain and reproduce the Jacobean hierarchical order in which the patriarchal monarch James I held sovereignty, although such subversive conducts as Leontes' powerfully registered in the play might evoke some doubts temporarily as to the monarch's supreme authority.

Journal

  • Journal of UOEH

    Journal of UOEH 10 (2), 219-225, 1988

    The University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan

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