Shakespeare and the Great Chain of Being
How the Bard and His Audiences Viewed Their Places in the World
Antigonus Disposing of Perdita - watercolor by Mary Hoare circa 1781, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Winter’s Tale is an odd play—a “problem play,” as scholars call it. It is part tragedy and part comedy; part psychological case study of jealousy and paranoia and part Cinderella story. Much of it takes place on the coast of Bohemia—which, in reality, had no coast by reason of being landlocked.1 Then, between the tragic and comedic segments, there is the jarring, sixteen-year hiatus. And, most famously, the play features a near-impossible stage direction calling for a character to “exit, pursued by a bear.”2
First, let’s look at the tragic segment . . .
King Polixenes of Sicilia has been on an extended visit with his lifelong friend King Leontes of Bohemia, and Polixenes is longing to be home. To no avail, Leontes urges him to stay a bit longer. However, Leontes’ pregnant wife, Hermione, intervenes and persuades Polixenes to postpone his departure. Her success makes Leontes suspicious that Hermione and Polixenes are having an affair. They are not, yet Leontes misinterprets everything they do or say as confirmation of his paranoid suspicions.3 The situation quickly becomes dicey for Polixenes, who returns to Sicilia.
When Hermione’s baby is born, Leontes believes it not to be of his blood and so decrees that it must be killed by exposure on the beaches of Bohemia. The task falls to Antigonus, a nobleman of the court. However, unbeknownst to the court, a shepherd rescues the abandoned baby, names her Perdita,4 and raises her as his own. Meanwhile, Hermione dies, and Leontes begins to realize his foolishness, as grief floods his heart.
Sixteen years pass, and Polixenes’ son, Florizell, just happens by and sees the shepherdess Perdita, now in the full flower of womanhood. Likewise, she sees him, and it is mutual infatuation at first sight. They hope to be married, but Polixenes forbids the match because he thinks Perdita is not of noble birth and therefore not worthy of his son. By happy coincidence, news arrives, telling that Leontes’ daughter, who was assumed dead, is alive and is the very Perdita betrothed to Prince Florizell.
But how do we know Perdita’s pedigree—that she really is Leontes’ daughter? Shakespeare gives us the answer from a citizen of Bohemia:
There is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, the letters of Antigonus5 found with it, which they know to be his character, the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding, and many other evidences proclaim her with all certainty to be the King’s daughter.
— The Winter’s Tale, 5.2.38
The play speeds forward to a more-or-less happy ending, with the young couple getting married, Leontes expressing remorse for all the problems he has caused, and the king discovering that his wife Hermione is alive—rumors of her death having been exaggerated.
For our psychological purposes, however, we must shift our focus back to the evidence of Perdita being a princess of Bohemia—particularly, the lines stating “the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding.” And so, we see in The Winter’s Tale (and similarly in Cymbeline) characters who had been separated from their parents in infancy and who knew nothing of their noble lineage, yet who were recognized as nobles because of their “noble bearing.”
Where did such ideas come from? It all goes back to a concept called “the Great Chain of Being,” originating with the ancient Greeks. In this view, everything in the universe, things living and nonliving, can be arranged in a hierarchy of goodness, value, and authority extending from rocks and minerals, through animals and people, on through spiritual beings, and ultimately to God (or the gods—who are also ranked in a hierarchy). Even the bear has its proper place.
Importantly, among humans, there is a sub-hierarchy ranging from peasants and other commoners, up through the nobles, and to the king, who is God’s representative on Earth. Inferred from this human hierarchy is the Divine Right of Kings, meaning that the king (or queen) is on the throne by the will of God, and woe be unto those who challenge the divinely chosen monarch. We see this, for example, in Shakespeare’s Richard II, where Bolingbroke dares to overthrow the ruler, ultimately bringing misery to his tenure as King Henry IV.
Shakespeare and his audiences, then, lived in a world ordered by the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings. It was a rather static world in which everyone had a place, with only a little room to improve their lot. There was, however, an opportunity for a successful businessman to move into the gentry by applying for—essentially purchasing—a coat of arms. Scholars believe that young Will revived a lapsed application for his father, which was approved in 1596. When his father died, the playwright inherited the coat of arms in 1602, moving him upward a notch in the Chain of Being and allowing him to call himself a gentleman—a step below the minor nobility.
In a sense, however, Shakespeare’s plays broadly reinforced the existing social hierarchy as part of the zeitgeist that inculcated these ideas into the masses. The implicit bargain for the theater was that by producing plays, poetry, and other art that favored the existing system, the artists and writers might at least keep their heads and at most might receive subsidies from the nobles. Indeed, Shakespeare’s company was favored by Queen Elizabeth, and upon her death, the new King James became their patron, and the troupe was called the King’s Men.
My larger point extends this analysis to nearly all art and literature up through the Renaissance, all of which can be seen as an affirmation of the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of monarchs. Things began to change with the advent of the Renaissance, which swept in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the beginnings of science.
In a touch of irony, perhaps, the play was presented at the wedding of King James’ daughter to a nobleman, Frederick, who later became King of Bohemia.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s website says, “Shakespeare may have been inspired to introduce [the bear] by Mucedorus, a chivalric romance which had been revived at court around 1610 and which included scenes featuring a bear.” https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-winters-tale/about-the-play/dates-and-sources
Psychologists call this confirmation bias, which we see many times in Shakespeare’s plays, including Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline.
“Perdita” is a Latin adjective meaning “lost.”
Sadly, Antigonus was also the unlucky individual devoured by the bear.