SHAKESPEARE'S "WINTER'S TALE" AND THE MYTH OF CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE

Author(s): Thomas Kullmann

Source: Poetica , 2014, Vol. 46, No. 3/4 (2014), pp. 317-330
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/24710217

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Thomas Kullmann (Osnabrück)

SHAKESPEARE'S WINTER'S TALE AND THE MYTH OF CHILDHOOD

INNOCENCE

The article argues that The Winter s Tale celebrates the innocence and naturalness
of children, a notion which contradicts the doctrine of original sin. According to
this doctrine, children, even babies, partake of an inherent sinfulness. By construct
ing children as innocent, Shakespeare positions himself against Calvinist Protes
tantism which based its theology on the inborn sinfulness of humanity. Amid the
conflicting religious and cosmological discourses of Elizabethan and Jacobean
England, Shakespeare's view of childhood innocence - evinced in a number of
plays beside The Winter's Tale - leans towards humanist notions of a natural order
which is considered innocent and, when disturbed, will reassert itself naturally.

1.

The Winter's Tale can be described as a tale of five royal children. This count
includes not only Mamillius and Perdita, children of the Bohemian king
Leontes, and Florizel, the son and heir of Polixenes, King of Sicily, but also
their fathers. In the first scene Camillo explains the firmness of their friend
ship by the childhood the two kings spent together:

Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia. They were train'd together in
their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection, which can
not choose but branch now. (1.1.21-24)'

Childhood obviously implies the purity of this friendship, while childhood

experiences are compared to roots, which like the roots of trees may be ten
der when first being produced but acquire particular firmness in the course of
time. The conversation culminates in a praise of the young Prince Mamillius,
to whom Archidamus, Camillo's Bohemian counterpart, pays the compli
ment of being "a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into my
note" (1.1.35 f.), and Camillo proudly admits that he is "a gallant child" (38).
He provides "unspeakable comfort" (34) as he may ensure the continuity of

1 All Shakespearean references are to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by Gwynne

Blakemore Evans, 2 Vol., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

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318 Thomas Kulimann

the present state of peaceful content. As with his father, childhood excellence
is expected to 'branch' in the decades to come.
Polixenes also has a little son, to whom, Hermione thinks, he might like
to return (1.2.34), in which case she would refrain from pressing him to stay.
When she then, in accordance with Leontes' wish, attempts to make Polix
enes stay for another week, she introduces the topic of Polixenes' and
Leontes' childhood - maybe to indirectly remind him of his son. Polixenes
now indulges in memories of childhood perfection which almost take on a
transcendental quality and make him challenge a central religious doctrine:

Her. [...] Come, I'll question you

Of my lord's tricks and yours when you were boys.
You were pretty lordings then?
Pol. We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal.
Her. Was not my lord
The verier wag o' th' two?
Pol. We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' th' sun,
And bleat the one at th' other. What we chang'd
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
That any did. Had we pursu'd that life,
And our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd
With stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven
Boldly, "Not guilty"; the imposition clear'd,
Hereditary ours. (1.2.60-75)

The hereditary imposition from which perpetual boyhood might h

Polixenes and Leontes is, of course, what the Christian churches r
original sin; Because of Adam and Eve's first transgression none
help being a sinner; at the Last Judgement to plead "not guilty" w
just be 'bold' but blasphemous.2 In his Confessions, I, 8 and 11, St
tine laid particular stress on the doctrine that even babies partake of

2 In the context of early seventeenth-century religious debate, this chall

central religious doctrine appears to me to be far too weighty a matter to b
away as a piece of "hysteria" or a rhetorical "hyperbole", as in Anthony
tall, William Shakespeare: The Winters Tale, London: Edward Arnold, 19
Neither could Shakespeare, in an "emphatically Christian" play, hope to "
deadly influence of contemporary controversy over minor theological ques
a few "pagan suggestions", as proposed by Samuel Leslie Bethell, The Win
A Study, London: Staples Press Ltd, 1970, p. 37 f. When Polixenes ques
doctrine of original sin, he is serious about it, and so is Shakespeare.

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Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 319

sinfulness - as evidenced by their habits of crying and quarrelling.3 To the

Protestant Reformers, including Luther, Melanchton, Calvin, the notion of
original sin, as expounded by Augustine, was central to their doctrine of the
necessity of justification through faith, grace, and Christ. Original sin as, for
example, the Puritan writer William Gouge states in his Short Catechisme
(1615), was understood as "That corruption of nature, wherein all are con
cerned and borne [...]" (p. 5).4 We are accordingly punished by "[t]he curse
of God, which causeth all miseries in this life, in the end death, and after it
eternall torment in hell [...]" (p. 6), being utterly unable to free ourselves
"out of this misery", because "[...] by nature wee are dead in sinne, and so
no more able to helpe our selues then dead men." (p. 6) The "elect of God"
(p. 4), however, partake of God's grace through "fulfilling the righteous
nesse" of God's Laws and "beleefe of the Gospel" (p. 7) - both of which are
obviously only possible after careful religious instruction. Gouge does not
explicitly state that children dying in infancy go to hell, but his treatise of the
"Duties of Children", which lays stress on discipline and obedience, clearly
shows his belief in the fallen state of children.5 Gouge's treatise was only
one of several hundred Protestant catechisms and manuals which empha
sized the evilness of children and necessity of diligent correction by means
of parents and teachers.6

2.

It is true that in Christianity there has always been a parallel tradition accord
ing to which newborn children are perfectly innocent. According to Mat
thew, 18.3, Jesus warned his disciples that unless they "[...] become as little

3 Sartcli Augustini Confessionum libriXIII, ed. by Lucas Verheijen, O. S. Α., Turnhout:

Brepols, 1981. See Thomas Ku11mann, "Pagan Mysteries and Metaphysical Ironies:
Gods and Goddesses on Shakespeare's Stage", in: Shakespeare Jahrbuch 149/2013,
pp. 33-51, here p. 48.
4 William Gouge, A Short Catechisme, wherein are briefely laid downe the fundamen
tall Principles of Christian Religion, London: lohn Beale, 1615, cf. electronic version
in EEBO (Early English Books Online). Page references given in brackets in the text
refer to this edition.

5 William Gouge, Of Domesticall Dvties: Eight Treatises, London: William Bladen,

1622, pp. 427-496.
6 Cf. e. g. Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500,
London: Longman, 1995, pp. 46-51; John Morgan, Godly Learning: Puritan Atti
tudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560-1640, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988, pp. 144-46.

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320 Thomas Kullmann

children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."7 From (at least) the
fifth century onward the Bethlehem children killed by Herod (Matthew,
2.16-18) were considered martyrs (thus partaking of the highest degree of
sainthood),8 and the Feast of the Holy Innocents was instituted, first celebrat
ed on 6th January and then on 28th December.
According to the usual Catholic view, original sinfulness is removed by
baptism. In medieval English Literature, the doctrine is expounded at length
in Pearl (14th cent.): The water of baptism "[...] wasches away the gyltes
feile / That Adam wyth inne deth uus drounde." (1. 655 f.) Part XII of the
poem (11. 661-720) additionally claims that "resoun" (665) demands that the
innocent (including little children) should be saved.9
William Gouge, by contrast, maintains that in the sacrament of baptism
"the inward clensing of our soules by the blood of Christ is represented and
sealed up unto us", baptism being a 'representation' and the ratification of a
treaty rather than a magical act which takes away sins.10 While The Winter's
Tale can certainly be used to demonstrate Shakespeare's Roman Catholic
leanings," it should be noted that it is not on baptism (or any pagan equiva

7 The Bible. Authorized King James Version, ed. by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prick
ett, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 27.
8 Pope Leo the Great (who died in 461) states in his sermons 31 and 33 that Christ be
stowed "martyrii [...] dignitatem" (the dignity of martyrdom) and "aeternam glori
am" (eternal glory) on the Bethlehem children killed by Herod. See Sancti Leonis
Magni Romani Pontificis tractatus Septem et nonaginta, ed. by Antonius Chavasse,
Turnhout: Brepols, 1973, pp. 163 and 174. In a sermon by Fulgentius (who died in
533), the Bethlehem children are explicitly called "innocent": "Per saeuitiam quippe
tuam [Herod] facti sunt martyres, qui per infantiam suam fuerant innocentes [...]".
Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius, Sancti Fulgentii Episcopi Ruspensis Opera, ed. by
Johannes Fraipont, Turnhout: Brepols, 1968, p. 914. In the Sacramentarium Veron
ense (or Leonianum), which contains liturgical texts used at Rome in the second half
of the fifth century A.D. (see Sacramentarium Veronense, ed. by Leo Cunibert
Mohlberg OSB, Roma: Herder, 1978, p. lxiv-lxxxv), there is a long section "in natale
innocentum", which includes the prayer: "quaesumus, ut eorum sinceritatem possi
mus imitari, quorum tibi dicatam veneramur infantiam". Infancy, dedicated to God, is
to be venerated. Ibid., pp. 164-166, nos. 1284-1293, here p. 165, no. 1290.
9 The Pearl poet's insistence on this doctrine may indicate that his position was not
uncontroversial. Cf. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
ed. by Arthur Cawley and John Anderson, London: Dent, 1976, p. 27.
10 Gouge, Short Catechisme (see note 4), p. 10.
11 According to Ellison, "Polixenes states the Catholic position, that through the work
ings of grace children really could be in a state of innocence." James Ellison, "The
Winter's Tale and the Religious Politics of Europe", in: Alison Thorne (ed.), Shake
speare's Romances, New Casebooks, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003,
pp. 171 -204, here p. 182. There seems to be no basis, however, for the contention that
the audience is meant to consider his position "erroneous" (ibid.), and the thesis "that
Shakespeare deliberately reflected the religious positions of the real Bohemia, where

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Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 321

lent) that Polixenes bases his claim of childhood innocence. He rather

emphasizes the naturalness of a boy's existence: They were like lambs, frisk
ing and bleating, and had no concept of any future.12 Polixenes' attitude
resembles that of John Earle, who in his Micro-cosmography, a collection of
essays and character sketches, describes "A Childe" as

[...] the best Copie of Adam before hee tasted of Eue, or the Apple; [...] Hee is
natures fresh picture newly drawne in Oyle, which time, and much handling,
dimmes and defaces. His Soule is yet a white paper vnscribled with obseruations of
the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurr'd Note-booke. He is purely hap
py, because he knowes no euill, nor hath made meanes by sinne to be acquainted
with misery. [...] Could he put his body with his little Coate, he had got eternity
without a burthen, and chang'd but one Heauen for another.13

3.

The notion of childhood innocence raises the question, implied in Hermi

one's reply to Polixenes (Winter's Tale, 1.2.75 f.), at which period of life we
lose this innocence and become sinners. Polixenes jokingly answers that his
and Leontes' first temptations occurred when his wife and Hermione
appeared in their respective lives (1.2.76-80). He thus alludes to the medie
val association of sexuality with sinfulness, indicating at the same time, by
addressing Hermione as "my most sacred lady" (1.2.76), that he is not seri
ous. Hermione also emphasizes her disbelief in this association by her gal

a Protestant majority was dominated by a Catholic elite" (ibid.) appears to me rather

fanciful. For further instances of the play's Roman Catholic tendencies, see Walter
Lim, "Knowledge and Belief in The Winter's Tale", in: Studies in English Literature
1500-1900 41/2001, pp. 317-334, here pp. 320-321.
12 This representation of childhood, as Belsey has noted, corresponds to what came to
be the prevailing view of childhood as "innocent, playful, disarming, and, above all,
vulnerable". Catherine Belsey, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction
of Family Values in Early Modern Culture, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999, p. 102.
Belsey also contends that "[w]hile the play [...] contributes to the early modern de
velopment of family values, it also anticipates our own concerns about domestic vio
lence, emotional and physical." (p. 89) It should be noted, however, that the family
'Eden' constructed by Shakespeare is not the only construction of family found in
early modern England. It may have been due to the Victorians (addressed by Belsey
on p. 103) that it would (for the time being) prevail over, e. g., Puritan concepts based
on the notion of original sin.
13 John Earle, Micro-cosmographie: Or, A Peece of the World Discovered, in Essayes
and Characters, London: Edward Blount, 1628, sig. Br-B2v. Cf. electronic version in
EEBO (Electronic English Books Online).

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322 Thomas Kulimann

lant (if joking) offer, also made in the name of Polixenes' queen, of taking
upon themselves their husbands' 'sins':

Th'offenses we have made you do we'll answer,

If you first sinn'd with us, and that with us
You did continue fault, and that you slipp'd not
With any but with us. (1.2.83-86)

Hermione's attitude with regard to the innocence of marital sexuality is cer

tainly one with which the audience is meant to sympathize, as throughout the
play Hermione is presented as perfect and saintly.14 This does not mean,
however, that the Biblical myth of the Serpent is cited for no reason; for it is
at that very moment that jealousy enters Leontes's mind and the Fall is
reenacted:15

Leon. [Aside.] Too hot, too hot!

To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.
I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances,
But not for joy; not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,
And well become the agent; 't may -1 grant.
But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,
As now they are, and making practic'd smiles,
As in a looking glass; and then to sigh, as 'twere
The mort o' th' deer - Ο that is entertainment

My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,

Art thou my boy?
Mam. Ay, my good lord.
Leon. I' fecks!
Why, that's my bawcock. Wha

The breakdown of syntax i

ent mental illness16 and par

14 Cf., for example, King's inter

clear-sighted, affectionate amus
in their childhoods together, th
young son combine to give an a
of character. She is her own wo
ter s Tale, The Shakespeare Ha
8. See also Belsey, Shakespeare
15 It may be that Polixenes' fail
'fall' of his own - for which he
his love for the shepherd's daug
16 Cf. King, The Winter's (s Tale
"The Winters Tale", Mancheste

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Shakespeare's Winter 's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 323

paradise. The impulses of suspicion which now take hold of Leontes and
which are followed by acts of aggression and murder are both 'unnatural'
(being directed against his wife and daughter) and 'sinful' (being directed
against God's laws), and, in accordance with Christian doctrine, it is only
after a long period of repentance that his sins are forgiven and he is finally
reunited with his wife and daughter.17
Whatever the correct interpretation of the Fall of Man may be, the dra
matic purpose of Polixenes' speech is evidently to establish the concept of
the innocence of children.18 As his account of his own son indicates, he has
not quite left this innocent world he nostalgically longs for:

Pol. If at home, sir,

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood. (1.2.165-171

When playing with his son, later named Flor

Florizel is his "soldier", his "statesman" - fro
Leontes, by contrast, twice tells his son: "G
190; see also 211), indicating that to himself
closed. His own "thick blood" does not admi
er. His state of mind may be construed as illne
it is a state contingent on the corruptions of a

17 It is true that Leontes' jealousy also admits of

gested by Taylor: "It does not seem unlikely that
hood in such a state of joyful ignorance should, as
generous affection for an honored guest: to be ob
the doctrine of ill-doing as an adult might very w
man nature as to be blissfully ignorant of such as
"Innocence in The Winter's Tale", in: Shakespeare
p. 228. Leontes certainly lacks knowledge of the
courtly ladies and gentlemen to converse on an int
virtuous. See Thomas Kullmann, "Dramatic Appr
in: Michele Marrapodi (ed.), Shakespeare and t
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014, pp. 57-72, here p.
18 Cf. Yan Brailowsky, The Spider and the Statue: P
Tale", Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 20
19 On children's play and attitudes with regard to c
Keith Thomas, "Children in Early Modern England
(eds.), Children and Their Books: A Celebration of
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 45-77, here esp
20 Cf. Taylor, "Innocence in The Winter's Tale" (se

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324 Thomas Kulimann

When Perdita's birth is announced in scene 2.2 and when she is brought on
stage in scenes 2.3 and 3.3, her innocence is emphasized by her mother
(2.2.27; 3.2.100), Paulina (2.2.39; 2.2.60 ["nor guilty"]), Antigonus (2.3.167),
and the Delphic oracle (3.2.134). This innocence is associated with a pagan
universe in which there is no such thing as 'original sin' imposed on humans
from the moment of birth.21 Paulina hopes to move the King by taking the
baby to him as "The silence often of pure innocence / Persuades when speak
ing fails" (2.2.39 f.). This innocence is connected to "great Nature" which
"[f)reed and enfranchis'd" the baby from the prison of the womb (2.2.57-59).
When she fails, Paulina even prays to "good goddess Nature":

And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it

So like to him that got it, if thou hast
The ordering of the mind too, 'mongst all colors
No yellow in't, lest she suspect, as he does,
Her children not her husband's! (2.3.104-108)

Goddess Nature has seen to provide a proof of Leontes' fatherhood; to doubt

it would equal a mother's uncertainty about her children's father. The yellow
colour obviously refers to the infection of jealousy, which Leontes, Paulina
hopes, has not passed on to his daughter's mind.
The baby's innocence is part of the innocence of natural processes, like
breast-feeding, from which she is now being deprived by Leontes. As Her
mione asserts, her daughter is "from my breast / (The innocent milk in it
most innocent mouth) / Hal'd out to murther" (3.2.99-101).
This emphasis on nature ties in with the many images taken from the area
of natural growth and used to describe children. In addition to the metaphors
quoted above, we can note that Mamillius makes "old hearts fresh" (1.1.39);
Leontes calls Mamillius his "bawcock" (1.2.121), his "wanton calf' (1.2.126);
he and his son are "[a]lmost as like as eggs" (1.2.130); Hermione refers to
Mamillius as "first-fruits of my body" (3.2.97). Antigonus, ordered to take
the baby to "some remote and desert place" (2.3.176), expresses the hope that
"kites and ravens" might be the "nurses" of the baby, as "[w]olves and bears,
they say, / Casting their savageness aside, have done / Like offices of pity."
(2.3.186-189) When he leaves Perdita on the coast of Bohemia he calls her
"Blossom" (3.3.46). The "root" of Leontes' "opinion", by contrast, "is rot
ten / As ever oak or stone was sound [...]" (2.3.90 f.); he is "most unworthy
and unnatural" (2.3.113) - being natural is obviously a necessary qualifica
tion to be a worthy father, husband, and king.
In the Sicilian scenes of the play, childhood reminiscences as well as chil
dren present on stage together with nature imagery create the image of a

21 Cf. Kullmann, "Pagan Mysteries and Metaphysical Ironies" (see note 3), p. 48.

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 Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 325

natural order, characterized by perfection and innocence. It is children who

take a natural part in this order while adults may be tempted to leave or even
destroy it. The pagan quality of this natural order is emphasized in scene 4.4,
where the shepherd and his daughter celebrate the feast of sheep-shearing,
where Prince Florizel compares himself to gods who have changed into ani
mals or poor humble swains (4.4.25-31), and where Perdita presents her
guests with flowers befitting their state in life (73-135). The Proserpina myth
(4.4.116-127) serves as a literary visualization of the processes of "great
creating Nature" (4.4.88), on whom Perdita relies in her gardening. Again, it
is adult unnaturalness which disturbs this natural order, when Polixenes
breaks up the feast (4.4.417-441), unaware that nature has managed to unite
the two adolescents who 'naturally' belong to one another.22

4.
[Chapter 3]
In opposing childhood innocence and adult sinfulness Shakespeare takes up
and elaborates a central motif of several earlier plays. In the fallen world of
the histories innocent children become the victims of adult cruelty. In Henry
VI, Part 3, Clifford kills young Rutland, to avenge his father who was killed
by Rutland's father, although Rutland's tutor implores him not to kill "this
innocent child" (1.3.8), and Rutland begs for his life, stating that he never
did any harm to Clifford (1.3.38). In King John, young Arthur's "innocent
prate" is more successful, as he manages to "awake" Hubert's "mercy"
(4.1.25 f.).
The best known instance of innocence victimized is, of course, the Princ
es in the Tower, who are killed by the agents of Richard III. In scene 4.3
Tyrell records the two murderers' account of this deed:

Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn

To do this piece of [ruthless] butchery,
Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,
Melted with tenderness and [kind] compassion,
Wept like [two] children in their deaths' sad story.

22 Cf. Brailowsky, The Spider and the Statue (see note 18), p. 120, who convincingly
draws attention to the "syncretism" of the play, which contains "Christian allusions"
as well as "pagan elements and symbols". I do not agree with the proposition, how
ever, that "the syncretic nature of The Winter s Tale is another consequence of its
mixed genre", neither can I go along with the thesis that Shakespeare wished to cater
for both the "religiously-minded" and "those who are better attuned to the intricacies
of country life" (ibid.). In the early seventeenth century, the issues of innocence, sin
and redemption were far too serious to be dependent on artistic choices or audiences'
tastes.

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326 Thomas Kullmann

"Ο, thus," quoth Dighton, "lay the gentle babes."

"Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girdling one another
Within their alabaster innocent arms.
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
[Which] in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay,
Which [once]," quoth Forrest, "almost chang'd my mind;
But O! the devil" - there the villain stopp'd;
When Dighton thus told on, "We smothered
The most replenished sweet work of Nature
That from the prime creation e'er she framed." (RichardIII, 4.3.4-19)

The children's innocence goes along with their affection for one another as
well as with their beauty, indicated by the traditional emphasis on the colours
white and red. The naturalness of this beauty is emphasized by the image of
roses on a stalk and the reference to summer. The two children embody natu
ral perfection, created by Nature, not God. It is true that the pagan motif is
offset by the prayer book, which may indicate, at least in a Roman Catholic
context, that they died in the state of grace. Still, it is their childhood, rather
more than their piety, which renders the princes innocent. Characteristically,
the repentant murderers "wept like two children"; their return to grace makes
them childlike.

While Shakespeare's plays establish a connection between childhood inno

cence and the beauty and order of nature, they explicitly reject the concept that
this innocence implies a lack of knowledge and discernment. While the Duch
ess of York calls her grandchildren (the children of Clarence) "[i]ncapable and
shallow innocents" (Richard III, 2.2.18), these children already suspect that
their father died by foul means (12 f). Prince Edward is not taken in by his
uncle's deceitful flattery; Richard's assertion that"[...] the untainted virtue of
[his] years / Hath not yet div'd into the world's deceit [...]" (3.1.7 f.) is obvi
ously a piece of wishful thinking. The Prince notices that there is something
wrong with his reception (3.1.6) and repudiates the assertion that his absent
uncles were "false friends" (15 f.).23 By contrast, two adults, Hastings and
Buckingham, are both wickedly ambitious and 'childishly' credulous.
In Macbeth, the concept of an innocent natural order associated with
childhood is systematically elaborated by means of imagery. Macbeth's own
childlessness, which frustrates his dynastic ambitions, associates him with

23 As Belsey notes, "[...] the princes represent a stage on the way to the autonomy of
children." Catherine Belsey, "Little Princes: Shakespeare's Royal Children", in: Kate
Chedgzoy/ Susanne Greenhalgh/ Robert Shaughnessy (eds.), Shakespeare and Child
hood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 3248, here p. 46. See also
Amanda Piesse, "Character Building: Shakespeare's Children in Context", in: ibid.,
pp. 64-79, here pp. 71 f.

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Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 327

the devil and his agents, who are deprived the means of taking part in God's
creation. At the beginning, however, Macbeth is still human, "too full o' th'
milk of human kindness" (1.5.17) to murder the king; the image of a breast
feeding mother obviously serves as a prototype of natural humanity. His
natural reluctance to kill the king is visualized in the form of a baby:

And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. (Macbeth, 1.7.21-25)

This allegorical figure of Pity may remind us of Robert Southwell's "pretty

Babe all burning bright" which appeared to the speaker of his poem "in
hoarie Winters night" ("The Burning Babe", 11. 4, 1). The Jesuit poet obvi
ously set store by the Christmas story, in which "This little Babe so few
dayes olde, / Is come to ryfle Sathan's fold [...]" ("New Heaven, New
Warre", 11. 25 f.).24 We may take this resemblance as another instance of
Shakespeare's Catholic leanings, as the Puritans discountenanced the cele
bration of Christmas25 and obviously found the notion of God as a baby
distasteful. The allegorical figure of Pity, however, together with the cheru
bin who might also have been thought of as childlike, seems to partake less
of Christian, even Roman Catholic, imagery, than of a mythical world in
which children stand for the natural order.26
Lady Macbeth continues the association of natural humanity and baby
hood when she emphasizes her own unnaturalness. Having prayed to the
"spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts" to "unsex" her (Macbeth, 1.5.40 f.)
and to take her "milk for gall" (48), she asserts her willingness to act unnatu
rally and inhumanly by a forceful image:

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums,

24 Robert Southwell, "The Burning Babe"; "New Heaven, New Warre", in: Helen Gard
ner (ed.), The Metaphysical Poets, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 31985 (' 1957), p. 39 f.
25 See, for example, Increase Mather's treatise "Against Profane Christ-Masse-Keep
ing" of 1687, quoted in: Simon Rae (ed.), The Faber Book of Christmas, London:
Faber& Faber, 1996, p. 10.
26 Cf. Othello, 4.2.64, where "Patience" is a "young and rose-lipped cherubin". Rather
than conveying "sexual overtones", as Honigmann suggests in his commentary (Oth
ello, ed. by Ernst Honigmann, The Arden Shakespeare 3rd series, Walton-on-Thames:
Thomas Nelson, 1997), the term "rose-lipped" obviously refers to the beauty of chil
dren, as in Richard III, 4.3.12, quoted above.

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328 Thomas Kulimann

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this. (Macbeth, 1.7.54-59)

The cruelty of a mother killing her child visualizes the violation of the natu
ral order brought about by Macbeth and his wife. People who are prepared to
kill innocent children will destroy anything which is innocent, i. e. natural,
including "innocent sleep" (2.2.33). Macbeth's criminal career will, of
course, reach its climax with the murder of Macduff's wife and children.
The association of early childhood with divinity is also found in The Tem
pest, where Prospero states that three-year-old Miranda was "a cherubin [...]
that did preserve me." (1.2.152 f.)27 Unlike himself she was "[i]nfused with
a fortitude from heaven [...]" so that her smile "rais'd in me / An undergoing
stomach, to bear up / Against what should ensue" (1.2.1545 8). Innocent chil
dren are not always doomed to be victims; because of their apparent proxim
ity to "heaven" they can also exercise a healing function.

5.

Shakespeare, as Joseph Campana notes, "had a thing for children."28 Not

only do they appear in his plays far more often than in the work of any of his
contemporaries, but they are also given the quality of being perfectly inno
cent, and thus, as a group, opposed to the adult characters, most of whom
become a prey to sinful temptations and mental derangements. The Winter's
Tale is an exemplary case in point. I should like to contend that by construct
ing children as innocent Shakespeare takes up a definite stance amid the
conflicting religious and cosmological discourses of Elizabethan and Jaco
bean England.
For one thing, the play appears to be directed against Calvinist Protestant
ism which based its theology on 'original sin', the inborn sinfulness of
humanity which is due to a "corruption of nature".29 To Puritans who believe
that "by nature wee are dead in sinne" (p. 6) any 'naturalness' of children can

27 This is obviously one of the first instances in English of equating "cherubs" or

"cherubin[s]" with little children. The OED gives 1680 as the date of the first re
corded use of "cherub" as applied to "a beautiful and innocent child" (def. 3c, in OED
Online, Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, http://diction
ary.oed.com/ [11 December, 2014]). The two occurrences in Othello and The Tempest
are given as first recorded uses of "cherubin" as applied to "a beautiful or beloved
woman" (def. 3b), but should, in my view, also be placed with definition 3c.
28 Joseph Campana, "Shakespeare's Children", Literature Compass 8.1/2011, pp. 1-14,
here p. 1.
29 Gouge, Short Catechisme (see note 4), p. 5.

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Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the Myth of Childhood Innocence 329

only be evidence of their fallen state (and to imagine praying to "good god
dess Nature" is certainly the worst of pagan abominations). The play's atti
tude with regard to children is certainly closer to that of Roman Catholicism,
according to which children after baptism are free of sin and likely to remain
so for some time, as sin consists in acts of wilful disobedience of God's com
mandments, of which children may be incapable. With its anti-Puritan
stance, the play firmly positions itself on one side of the cultural, religious
and political divide which was to culminate in the Civil War of 1642 to
1650.30 Not only does the concept of'natural innocence', which brings about
a restoration of familiar as well as political harmony, tie in with the pacifism
of King James; it might also have been considered as facilitating a rap
prochement with the church of Rome, which was certainly one of the King's
pet projects.31
For another thing, we may wonder if The Winter's Tale does not oppose
Christian world views altogether. Even Catholic doctrine is based on the
assumptions of a fallen world and the necessity of redemption. Shakespeare,
I should like to suggest, goes beyond Christian doctrine by making his chil
dren, like Perdita, inhabit a prelapsarian world which, at least in The Winter's
Tale, is also the world of pagan mythology. Pagan gods and goddesses, like
Apollo and Proserpina, represent the natural processes of vegetation, of
growth, death and rebirth, and thus a harmonious natural order.32 Innocent
children can be seen as mythical emblems of this order which is considered
'innocent' and, when disturbed, will reassert itself'naturally'. The notion of
an ideal state which could be found in this world is obviously at odds with
some central Christian doctrines, like that of original sin, while it owes a lot
to Renaissance humanism, e. g. to neoplatonic concepts.33
Shakespeare, of course, does not do away with the Christian concepts of
sin, the Fall of Man and redemption through repentance and grace. Sin, how
ever, like illness, is constructed as a disturbance of natural perfection rather
than a manifestation of the fallen state of this world. It is children who
embody this natural perfection which is constantly endangered by adult fail

30 Cf. Thomas Kullmann, "Shakespeare and Peace", in: Ros King/ Paul Franssen (eds.),
Shakespeare and War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 43-55, here esp.
pp. 47-53. See also Ellison, "The Winter's Tale and the Religious Politics of Europe"
(see note 11), p. 195 f.
31 Cf. William Brown Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
32 Cf. Kullmann, "Pagan Mysteries and Metaphysical Ironies" (see note 3).
33 Cf. Thomas Kullmann, "Courtliness and Platonism in the English Renaissance", in:
Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann/ Sabine Schiilting (eds.), Anglistentag 1998: Proceedings,
Trier: WVT, 1999, pp. 99-109, here p. 206 f.

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330 Thomas Kulimann

ings. Unless we become as little children, we shall not enter into the king
dom of heaven.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Kullmann

Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Universität Osnabrück
Neuer Graben 40
49069 Osnabrück
Email: tkullman@uni-osnabrueck.de

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