LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

18 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
whorehouse. The Bawd remarks, “She would make a puritan of the devil”
(IV.vi.9). Later Pericles, grieving the deaths of both wife and daughter,
comes to Myteline. He is so deep in depression that he has let his hair grow
wild and refuses to speak to anyone. Marina, gifted with song and speech,
restores him to sanity and they are reunited. Overjoyed, Pericles exclaims,
“She is not dead” (V.i.215). They go to worship at Ephesus, where they
encounter the priestess who cries, “That Thaisa am I, supposed dead / And
drown’d” (V.iii.35-36).
In this play we have a double resurrection. Pericles’ wife and daughter
come back to life. Marina is not only one of Shakepeare’s virtuous women;
she is positively an evangelist, preaching righteousness in the midst of a very
fallen world. Even Pericles himself, after losing his reason like
Nebuchadnezzar, experiences a kind of rebirth.
6. The Winter’s Tale
Like Measure for Measure, this play has been a lightning rod for critics
opposing Christianity. Hallet Smith contends, “considerable straining of the
language, structure, and atmosphere of the play is required to make a
specifically Christian doctrinal statement of it” (RS, 1567). Smith errs.
Dogma is dogma, plays are plays. Dogma plays badly on stage, and plays are
not written to expound dogma. Nevertheless, sound doctrine can inspire high
art, and the greatest works of art can present Christian themes in imaginative
ways inaccessible to academic theology. So we have in The Winter’s Tale a
Christian story of redemption.
Leontes, King of Sicilia, is hosting his old friend Polixenes, the King of
Bohemia. Leontes tends to be jealous, though, and can’t get it out of his
mind that he is being cuckolded by his friend. Leontes trumps up charges
and imprisons his virtuous wife, Hermione. In prison, she gives birth to a
daughter, Perdita. Leontes rejects his own child and banishes it. Even when
he is confronted with the truth, Leontes remains intransigent. Polixenes
breaks with him, accompanied by the faithful Camillo, former servant of
Leontes. Suddenly, news comes that the King’s son Mamillius is dead.
Hermione collapses and is carried off. The virtuous Paulina says, “this news
is mortal to the queen” (III.ii.148). Then, at last, Leontes repents and grieves
his rash behaviour: “I have deserv’d / All tongues to talk their bitt’rest”
(III.ii.215-16). He assumes that his daughter is dead also.
The banished child Perdita is taken to Bohemia where she found
abandoned and raised by a shepherd. Eventually she falls in love with
Florizel, son of Polixenes. In a parallel plotline, Polixenes disowns his son
for courting a common shepherd-girl. Camillo reveals the truth of Perdita’s
identity, and helps her and Florizel flee to Sicilia. Polixenes pursues them in
anger. Leontes and reconciles with Polixenes and receives his “dead”
daughter with astonishment. Paulina then takes them all to visit a “statue” of