Part 4 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.”
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Transcript
0:17 Erin: [email protected] subtextpodcast you're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:33 Wes: Okay. Welcome to part four of our discussion of the winner's tale. We just got done discussing act one. Now we're ready to rocket through act two.
0:45 Wes: Although I think the beginning of act two is going to be. It's going to be a lot and then it really picks up. But yeah, so this. Now we get to the point which we've discussed. I think we've already discussed it a bit, which is the interaction between Mamilius and his mother and the ladies, who I take to be, in part, at least, his. His nannies suggestive, bit sexually suggestive. And then we get the part about the. His mom asking for the tale and him saying, a sad tale's best for winner. There's a number of references internal to the play, to this concept of a. A winner's tale or an old wives tale. One of them comes up when some, I think some gentlemen say later on that the recovery of Perdita will sound implausible. It's like an old wives tale. The bear, the fact that Antigonus is killed by a bear makes it sound like an old wives tale. The fact that Hermione is still living makes it sound like an old wives tale. And then Autolycus, we'll talk about a tale Porter and six honest wives. And that's in the context of him defending the honesty of his ballads after Mapsah asks for a ballad that is the print of life. So they're looking for honesty in these tales. But in any case, this, I think, is this first internal reference to the idea of a winner's tale. And of course, Shakespeare is doing all of this intentionally. It has to be a reflection on the status of the thing that he's writing and not unlike what's going on in the Tempests as well. But the other. I think we've talked a bit about how this is a trigger for Leontes. And I think part of it is the fact that it's whispered. And the reason why Mimilius is going to whisper this to his mom, he says, I'll tell it softly so yon crickets won't hear something like that. That right, yon crickets shall not hear it. And I think by crickets he's referring to the ladies. He's just had this interesting, you know, we'd want with you if you'd have us experience with ladies. And now he's going to. It's almost like he's trying to create jealousy. Okay, well, now I'm going to give something to you, Mom. And the ladies are not allowed to hear it, even though they've just been flirting with me. And so here we have a child who's trying to induce jealousy. And then we have an adult, Leontes, who is. Obviously, he's already been set off. He's already in a state of jealousy, but it's hard not to believe that this feeds it.
3:32 Erin: Yeah, and it's an interesting. This moment is an interesting flip of the imbalance that we've been speaking about previously, where we have Hermione among a bunch of men. Right here we have Mamilius, the sole boy, among a bunch of women. And this feels to me like a very. The beginning of the scene is a very female space. It's a. It's what I would call in a grad class is like female coded space. Mamelius is commenting on their makeup. And also there's a lot of.
4:07 Wes: You learned it of women's faces.
4:09 Erin: Yeah, that's right, that's right. And there's a lot of discussion of the moon. Of course, he talks about the half moon made with a pen of the eyebrow. And then later a lady will say of Hermione, the queen, your mother rounds a pace which is also reminiscent to me of like a moon. She's, you know, she's. She's waxing, so.
4:31 Wes: And they're teasing him that he's not going to be the apple of her eye anymore when she has a baby.
4:35 Erin: And we know this, this baby too is. I have a lot of theories about this. I think this is related, very closely related to the spider, which will come later. But I. I think it's obvious to me, or maybe I'm just imagining this, like Leontes. It seems obvious to me that everyone knows this is going to be a girl. Like there's a kind of competition, male, female competition, inherent to this discussion with Mamilius. Maybe I'm making that up, but I do think that the spider, which comes in just a second later, practically maybe bears this out, that Perdita is the spider. I don't know.
5:18 Wes: Interesting. Before we get to the spider, just maybe as we keep going, we can think on why is a sad tale best for winter. What does Mimilius mean by that? I don't have much to say about that right now, but it could be something to keep in mind. And then I think it might be worth relating that later on, Perdita is actually, when she's handing out flowers to people at the sheep shearing. She will. To Polixenes and Camilo, she will give these winter, winter flowers anyway, flowers that are appropriate to old age. And she will lament the fact that she doesn't have any springtime flowers for if that's right, for Florizel and for others who then. And for all the young people, people, she doesn't have flowers suitable to them. So winner, in other words, is also a stand in for age, which is not surprising. Winner's tale, old wives tale. It's something having to do with what older people tell younger people. We've associated it with superstition. Maybe also we can associate it with the deceptions that older people engage in, especially with regard to sex, Right. Oh, a stork brought the baby. That's why your mother is rounding. Not that those two can be reconciled, but. So childhood theories of. Distorted theories of sexuality that are in some ways encouraged by adults. I just want to emphasize the fact that, yeah, this idea of a winner's tale has something to do with what it is parents are communicating to children. The representatives of old age are bequeathing to the younger generation. Plastics. Right. I'm thinking of the Graduate now. Again, someone pulling this idea in person and talking about plastics. But in any case, and also keep in mind, the way the second half of the play is going to recompense the first, the way the more comic part is going to be recompense, the springtime, let's say, is going to be recompensed to the. The wintry, tragic first part of the play. Older people have to move aside, right, to allow the younger generation to do their thing and to allow the seasonal cycle to complete itself. And the question is, are they doing that in the way in what it is they're communicating, not just in old wives tales, but in culture in general, in what they are bequeathing to the younger generation. Are they facilitating that transition or are they not? And both Winter's Tale and the Tempest seem to be about facilitation of that transition. In Prospero's case, he has to let go, right, and give Myranda away, even unto his son of his enemy. And we get some of that in this as well. So just thoughts as we go forward. I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that.
8:18 Erin: No, I like that a lot. I hadn't thought about Winter as
8:23 Erin: older person, in which case, I think for me a sad Winter's tale would be one of regret. And that maybe is it becomes a winter's tale by the end of Act 3 or at some point in Act 3, thinking about Leontes as being middle aged, as we've already discussed, and maybe in the previous episode, we talked about the moment that Leontes kind of animates that clock, that he gets it to speed up. So maybe in some way that's representative of speeding toward that kind of regret or mourning that we're talking about, where this is becoming the winter's tale. Maybe it was a fall tale. You know, presumably in terms of the seasons of life, Leontes and Hermione maybe are middle aged or approaching middle ages. By the end of Act 3, he will have sped everybody up to this tale of regret and mourning, like an old tale, a winter's tale which then, as you say, I think becomes a tale of recompense and spring and renewal in the final two acts.
9:25 Wes: Yeah, properly speaking, it should be an act of mourning. We got at this in the Tempest. And the aesthetic in general, arguably must include not just the manic moment, not just the denial moment, not just the putting of things into sprites and goblins or distortion, the harsh realities of the world through one signifier or another. But one has to let go of the manic moment, the moment of grandioseness or even revenge, which is what Prospero would like to do in essentially telling the story of his enemies landing on his island and wanting to control and destroy them. Instead, he sublimates that into something aesthetic. And there's a morning in that. Right. There's a letting go. And the larger letting go is the ceding one's own interests and ambitions to those of the younger generation. So properly told, the winner's tale should be about that. Improperly told, it can become something darker, like revenge, or in Leonte's case, jealousy. His jealousy may involve not wanting to let go of something as his wife has her second child, or as his good friend leaves or. I haven't thought that through. We're getting a little bit. We're getting hints of the way the second part can link up with the first and involve some kind of recompense. But unfortunately, we are still stuck with crazy Leontes at this phase. It's actually quite fortunate. Don't get me wrong. This is the best part of all this, and it's why we're spending so long on it. And this spider steeped speech is just amazing.
11:01 Erin: So, yeah, speaking of grandiosity, I just. I have to start using this line all the time. How blessed am I in my true opinion? I love it. That's the way that the spiders.
11:13 Wes: How accursed in being so blessed.
11:16 Erin: Okay, there's the flip side. But yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be as blessed as he is with omnipotence and omniscience.
11:26 Wes: But do you want to read this, the relevant poem?
11:29 Erin: Yeah. So he goes on to say, there may be in the cup a spider steeped, and one may drink, depart and yet partake no venom, for his knowledge is not infected. But if one present the abhorred ingredient to his eye, make known how he hath drunk. He cracks his gorge his sides with violent hefts. I have drunk and seen the spider. Oh, I love it.
11:51 Wes: I have drunk and seen the spider. That's all awesome. So what is he saying here? This again gets at the strange nature of jealousy, which is that. Or betrayal, which is that if you don't know someone has been unfaithful to you, then there's a sense in which you're not harmed by it because no distress is caused to you. Right. Harm may be impending. It may be that there's betrayal if you knew about it. It's a clue to what might happen in the future when the more overt actions that could actually harm you, not just because your feelings are hurt, but in any case, for this to fully have an impact, for the Hermione's unfaithfulness fully to have an impact, he can't. It can't just be that it's happened. He has to actually know about it. So you, you not only drink from the poisoned cup, you know what, you have just drunk and then you come down with all the symptoms. But of course, the symptoms in his case are just crazy jealousy. That's the thing he doesn't seem to understand. It's not that there's a spider in his cup at all. There's no spider in his cup. But he thinks there is. It's the problem. And the symptom is jealousy. The symptom is not he's taking the. His pain to involve an actual betrayal when the pain is caused by suspicion.
13:20 Erin: And I love the supremacy of thought here because thinking through this literally, and maybe this is too obvious to even say, right, but what he's describing is two situations, one of which someone drinks a drink, they don't know a poisonous spider is in it. So they're okay. Well, of course it's unprovable. And if they did later die, let's say they did drink a poisonous spider. Didn't know a poisonous spider was in there. Then of course, later, if they died, it would be attributed to some other cause because no one would know that they drank the spider. If. If you drank something, Wes, like if I gave you something and then I said, by the way, I put a poisonous spider in your drink, even if I didn't, you would then probably get sick, Right, because you would be. You would be upset or disgusted or something like that. And maybe you would gag or something if not.
14:09 Wes: Or induced by suggestion.
14:11 Erin: Yeah, exactly. So there's. There's the very suggestion of. Yeah, whether I put it in your drink or not. The suggestion is what produces the visual evidence which Leontes is reading as proof. So he's sort of reverse engineering this idea. But what's most interesting to me is, and I think I talked about this in one of the first two episodes is this X ray vision idea that happens on 45 where he says, I have drunk and seen the spider. So like so many of the. Of the turns of phrase he uses, it's in reverse order. I have drunk and seen the spider. That can't be possible. If you. He drinks it, then he sees the spider. The spider's inside of him by that point, so he's never seen it. He's just had to have been told or presented the ingredient to his eye. But then again, that's another example of some of an impossibility. You can't drink the spider and then have someone present the spider to you to prove that it was in your cup the whole time. Something's broken there, right?
15:19 Wes: Yeah. No, I think it's a good point. Unless the spider has marinated in the drink and poisoned it and then it's left at the bottom once you've drunk. I don't know.
15:29 Erin: Could be. I don't know how.
15:30 Wes: That's my way to. That's just me trying to save the appearances.
15:33 Erin: But no, I think it's important. I think this X ray thing is important because it's totally insane pain. It's also, to me reminiscent of. It's a body inside of a body. It's a pregnancy. This is. This links up to my idea that the spider is Perdita. You know, the baby itself is like proof of. Of infidelity. You know, dance. Dancing around in there, inside your stomach. Right. In the adaptation that I looked at, Hermione is frequently feeling her stomach and getting. While other people are talking, miming, having other people, like the ladies come up and feel her stomach. And it's obviously suggested the baby's kicking.
16:16 Wes: Which one is it?
16:17 Erin: The one with Anthony Shore. I Can't remember his name now.
16:21 Wes: Yeah. And it's set in the 19th century. 19th century, yeah. I didn't watch it, but I know I saw a preview of it, so I immediately brought that one to mind. Yeah. So she's touching her belly a lot.
16:35 Erin: Yeah, she's touching her belly and other people are coming up to touch it. And the suggestion that the baby is kicking and people are like, ooh. You know, like when they. When they're touching it, like. Oh, yeah, I feel it. You know, like they have that kind of expression on their faces. This is all just being. It's all silent because it's. While other people are speaking. But I thought that was a really brilliant bit of stage business to have. It's a little creepy too, because. Because on a literal level, she's a woman with a. With a pillow underneath her dress. Right. In the costume. And then you. Then you think about the reality of. Of this play as it was performed in Shakespeare's day. She would be a man pretending to be a pregnant woman with a pillow under her shirt. So in that way, it's similar to the sort of, like, fake spider idea. But. Yeah, so it's like the spider is doing jumping jacks inside him. Somehow. He feels it inside him. He takes that as proof.
17:29 Wes: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. This has me. Had me reflecting about, what is it about infidelity in another that can actually harm us? Why do we care? Is it just basic? Can it be given some sort of explanation? The most obvious explanation is that it, you know, that it portends a loss of love, that they may leave me for the other. Their attentions are divided. Right. They're. They don't love me. I'm not. Not the only person for them. I don't fully satisfy them. There's the threat of comparison. There's the threat that a spouse would enjoy another person more. There's the creation of this domain of intimacy and carnal, bodily, sensual knowledge that is no longer. That is an unshared domain that's supposed to be completely shared in some sense by the spouses. And one could say there's a specter of raising others. I'm not person's offspring, which is one of the things the Antes worries about. There's the breaking of a promise, the marriage vow, which will become an important feature of what happens a little later between Florizel and Perdita. This promise to forego sexual pleasure with others. I think there's something to do with not wanting the other to have more sexual pleasure. Than you. You're kind of stuck with having the exact. Well, it's not the exact same amount. Right. So it can differ, but you forgo other partners for the sake of a spouse. But in any case, that's me thinking out loud about something that deserves a lot more thought, because I think it is psychologically complicated. Why it is that this strange paradox, if you don't know it happened, maybe you're not even harmed by it? Or can you be harmed if you don't feel it? If you don't know it, you can't feel it. You can't feel distressed about an infidelity that you don't know didn't happen. I think that my final thought about this is just that there's a way in which the spouse or the person that you love is kind of a container for your own life and your own narrative. They're the person who knows everything about you and what's happening with you. And their story is. You're telling your own story to some extent through their eyes. And in some sense they are the. The co writer, maybe they're even the storyteller. And you're the performer. And one needs them as that kind of container or even narrative framework. You need that framework to be uncorrupted. In some sense, the story, in other words, the camera has to be on you. It can't be on another person as well. So infidelity, I think the thought of infidelity means the thought of the. That containing function of another human being, another subjectivity fails, and that's part of the threat. And this is something that we talked about in the Tempest, too. And it's something that motivates not just jealousy, but revenge. Right. Part of the problem when we've been harmed is not just the pain of the harm, but it's the disrespect and the way in which another has hijacked our story. Leontes thinks a lot about people laughing at him. There's a malicious storyteller. And what you want to do with revenge is to wrest the narrative back from that other person. So I think he's thinking, in a way, revenge, in a way, is the subject of the Tempest. And here he's doing a quite similar thing with. With jealousy. And this passage about the spider really poses the question, because it is, as I've put it, a bit of a puzzle or a paradox about how it is that jealousy or the feeling of hurt from betrayal, how those things work, I love that.
21:28 Erin: That's all great. You're giving Me a crazy thought. Okay, I love it. I'm hesitant to share.
21:35 Wes: The more crazy thoughts, the better would.
21:37 Erin: Okay, well, you know, I'm thinking. I'm thinking of adultery as a kind of numerical problem.
21:45 Wes: I love this already. I love turning things into numerical problems.
21:51 Erin: Well, from say, from a Judeo Christian perspective, maybe another in other religions as well, right? We have this idea of the two becoming one flesh in the marital, in the sacrament of marriage. And so in this conception, marriage is something like one plus one equals one, so that you merge in this mystical way with the other person. So in adultery, that's atomized. So instead it's like one plus one becomes three, like an extra person has been added. It atomizes the couple. Like it splits apart the union, right. And then adds another person. So you end up with this remainder or something like that in a marriage in which there's been adultery. And I'm thinking about the crazy part of this. Maybe this is already crazy, but the other crazy part of it is like, when else does that happen? When else do we have one plus one equals three is of course in pregnancy.
22:49 Wes: No, I think this is spot on.
22:52 Erin: Okay, good, because I'm a little disturbed.
22:57 Erin: Because it's the same mathematical concept as an adulterous relationship, right? And we've already talked a little bit about Mamillius threat to Leontes. I think I raised this idea that my professor had discussed with me, that Leontes is not jealous of Polixides or Hermione, but of Mamilius and of the idea that he can't be the boy, he can't be the main character anymore, so long as the son is there to replace him. Right? But I think. And I think that's interesting and certainly true on several levels, but I'm interested also in this idea of the pregnant body maybe as being. We've already touched on Leontes misogyny as being something especially threatening to Leontes. This conception of the spider, of something venomous preying on you, of a parasitical relationship, seems to be a mirror of what's happening in Hermione's body, Hermione's pregnant body. And that perfectly natural relationship, which in Leontes mind is like in this idea contagion type of thing we've been discussing, is perverted and turned into something poisonous, just as the lingering dram of Archidamus is turned into something poisonous by Camilla. And poor Leontes can't win in my mind, right? Because there's a suggestion he might be jealous of. He might be jealous of Mamilius. And I'm also wondering too if Perdita's being a girl. Like I said, I have the suggestion that people know it's a girl, even though there's really no reading for this in the text. That makes sense that that's somehow something to be suspicious of too, if you're a man, right? How can it be mine if it's a girl and I'm a boy? Do you know what I mean? There's something sort of elemental happening in that regard. And there's also a recursive element of that. A woman pregnant with another woman, which might also psychologically tie into this. So I'm sidestepping this numerical thing thing and adding in something else, which I don't mean to do. We can just discuss the numerical thing. But I. But it puts me in mind of this problem of pregnancy, which I think has many other problems attached to it psychologically for Leontes, but perhaps that's all craziness. Yeah, yeah.
25:03 Wes: No, I think it's a good point. You're reminding me of Plato's Symposium, in which various characters give theories of love. And one of the famous ones is Aristophanes account, which is that love involves finding our other half. And quite literally we've been split off from other half by the gods. And when we originally eight limbed creatures cut in two, and then when we find that person, we're in love with them. And being in love and in that relationship is essentially about fusion, about refusing using with your lost other half. And Socrates rejects that and says, no, the love of relationship always involves a third. You get a kind of union, but you only get it in the offspring. And it's incomplete and not fully satisfying. And that's the punishment of the gods, if you want to look at it that way. That's not what he says, actually. I'm adding that for Aristophanes the punishment is separation. But in any case, and this is all implied in Socrates account, but you get this incomplete union with the other, and then the third thing is the child. And this lines up with the way with our relationship, relationship with the mind of the world in general, we can put signifiers together, symbols together, but that doesn't give us this immediate fusion with external reality. We don't have a direct relationship with external reality. It always remains indirect and not completely satisfying. So Socrates definition of love has to do with reproduction. Reproduction in the presence of beauty is the idea for Socrates. Not fusion, but the production of a third and the production of something else. And I think that's what your point about the third and the child makes me think of. And I think it's important because I think this is part of the. What happens in jealousy is that the reason why adultery hurts is that there's a fantasized fusion with the other. And you, again, you want this single domain of shared intimacy they can't have. There's this one realm at least. Of course, they have to have their own lives. Right. But there's one realm where everything is shared. Shared. And if it's not shared, if it's not entirely shared, if someone's having another staked out another domain of intimacy, then the fusion is threatened. And of course, famously in psychoanalysis, you know, once you. Once you add a child in the mix, you get all these kind of Oedipal problems. The jealousy of the child towards the father, but also the father towards the child. So the child intrudes on the parental pair in a way that's very similar to the intrusion of a lover, another lover. And so I think it's. Again, what you're saying is spot on about. I wouldn't say it's only of Mimelius, but that has to be it. In part, that has to be part of what's going on with Leontes. Psychologically, Mimelius is part of the threat. The new baby is part of the threat. Right. The ladies tease Mamelius about how he's going to be on the back burner once the new baby comes in, but that's also what happens to the husband, right?
28:36 Erin: Yeah, that's great. I love too, the way that this numerical thing we're pointing to is actually. It's almost a joke in the text when Hermione goes into the prison cell pregnant, and first there's just one prisoner, and then there are two prisoners, right?
28:57 Erin: When she gives birth. Right. And then, of course, there's that great argument that Paulina makes about how the child is not in fact a prisoner, but the point is that first there's one person in the room, then there are two people in the room. So, yeah, it's funny playing with numbers in pregnancy.
29:15 Wes: The other aspect of this, you know, the one more thing about this spider speech, is that he's blessed and he's cursed to know the truth. So knowing the truth is good, but knowing certain truths can be deeply distressing. And again, he's identifying the truth with his own suspicion, with a psychological state. Essentially, it's this kind of omniscient, grandiose, omniscient feeling that he has so he doesn't understand that. That, in fact, the curse is not about. He's accursed not because of the external world, he's accursed because his faculty of judgment is impaired. And so he's got it backwards. And the judgment, of course, brings a lot of disaster for itself. But this omniscience of thought, it's as if there's a hint that he knows that his suspicion and jealousy are not warranted. But it's almost as if he thinks that. That the mind can affect the past. So this is a variation on omnipotence of thought, that his suspicion makes it retroactively true that she did it. I don't have the passages in front of me right now, but we may see them as we go forward. And this is not. This is not unrelated to an idea that I think does afflict people, which is the sense that their emotions, or the sense of what is normatively true, what is ethical or what is moral or what is just overrides the facts. The facts don't matter in light of. Of certain feelings. I think that's part of what's going on here.
30:44 Erin: Yeah. Not to skip too far ahead, but around line 1 68. Is that what you're pointing to, where Leontes says the matter, the loss, the gain, the ordering on it is all properly ours. So he takes sole responsibility for his own thought and suspicion, and that doesn't seem to be a problem for him. Right. It's what he believes. And that's it. That's evidence enough. Right. He goes on to say shortly thereafter, that all of his suspicions lacked sight only. So.
31:15 Erin: Yeah. Not for approbation, but only seeing all other circumstances made up to the deed. So in other words, he has all the evidence he needs, short of actually seeing them have sex with each other. I guess.
31:31 Erin: But this idea is that the. A notion or a belief that one has doesn't need an object outside of oneself or the sight outside of oneself to be conceived of or to be true. It doesn't need to conform with an outside reality to be believed. In other words, he is wholly justified without evidence because he believes it, as I think you're saying.
31:53 Wes: Yeah. This is exactly the part of the play that I was thinking about. Yep. And I call this section the Question of Evidence. Because Hermione says to him, at the beginning of this particular part of the scene, after he's turned on Hermione and is about to have her taken away, she says, you'll grieve for having published me. Thus, there's a lot of publishing and printing metaphors in this. But anyway, so he's announced her infidelity to the world, and she says, you'll regret it. And he says, if I'm wrong in those foundations which I build upon, then the world itself is without foundations. And this again is a variation on the speech he's already made, which is that if my suspicions are nothing, then everything is nothing. If I can't found my conclusions on my own mental states, on my own feelings, then nothing is sure. Right? If my certitude doesn't count, then if this isn't certain, then nothing is certain. That kind of idea. And then we get a scene where the. Which I think is what you're just referring to, where the lords are pleading with him and they're making basically similar types of arguments so that the arguments have the same form as his. Like if. If she's false, all women are false. Turning his reasoning on him. And what Leontes does then is he accuses them of having poor senses. They're just not as sensitive as him. And. And so this is a great line about the tweaking of the nose. Let me just read this. This is on near line 150, so cease no more. You smell this business with a sense as cold as is a dead man's nose. But I do see it and feel it as you feel doing thus, he tweaks his nose and see with all the instruments that feel. So when he senses something, he not only can he smell, but it's like his nose is being tweaked. And then I think he's suggesting here, or in other words, they would have to be tweaked on the nose to have the sensitivity that he has by just smelling. And further on in the scene, it's not just about his sensitivity, but he talks about all he needs is his own forceful instigation or natural goodness. He can ground all of this in his own insight, in his own character and his own own sensitivity. He says he needs no more than what I know. His knowledge, in a way, is its own foundation. What need we make communion with you of this, but rather follow our own forceful instigation? This is at a point where the count, where the lords are saying, let us advise you. And he's saying, I don't need advisors, I only need my own sensitivity. I only need my own mind. And you guys are all just. Just idiots if you don't see this the way I see this.
34:52 Erin: Yeah, it's like the. It's as though I love the passage that you're pointing to with this, I do see it and feel it, because that would suggest actual, tangible evidence. Right. But in fact, what happens in Leontes is that the knowledge or the idea seems to then produce this kind of sensual reality. So the idea precedes evidence and then produces its own evidence, which he says he can see and feel. We don't know what this is. He says, like, I can pinch you. And then he pinches Antigonus. So it seems like he says it literally. He says, as you feel doing thus. And then, bam, pinches Antigonus. That seems to reflect the order, the order of affairs going on in Leonti's own mind, which is. I say that this is true. True. And now it is true. Pinch. You know, rather than being pinched and then saying, ow.
35:47 Wes: Oh, this is in the dead man's nose speech.
35:50 Wes: Okay. Because I have it. As I do. As you do. Feeling thus, he tweaks his nose. And I took Leontes to be tweaking his own nose, which is now that.
35:59 Erin: Oh, and my notes. Pinches Antigonus.
36:02 Wes: Yeah, yeah, no, they're clarifying that. And that makes more sense to say that he's tweaking Antigonus, because that, I think, is true to his character. He wouldn't just illustrate it for them by tweaking his own nose, he would make someone feel the pain of that.
36:16 Erin: Yeah, well, I don't know. It's also appropriately masochistic and solipsistic to tweak his own nose. So I think there's something true in your reading too. But prior to that, on 105, roughly. Hermione says there's some ill plan. It reigns. I must be patient till the heavens look with an aspect more favorable. So she. She's the ill planet that she's seeing. In control here is the body planet, you know, Leontes. Body. Body planet. And so I think that ties into this whole idea of. Of the senses. It's just. It's just funny that he's. He's on the one hand saying he needs no outside evidence, that he does not need the evidence of his senses. His thought is supreme. And yet at the same time be so entrenched, as we said in the previous episode, with the sensual and accusing everyone else of being overly sensual and of getting to the senses only through his own idea.
37:19 Wes: Yeah, I think in the passage you pointed to, he says it's their familiarity was as gross as ever. Touched conjecture that lacks sight only. So he's telling us he didn't see them do anything directly. He's just interpreting behavior that might be interpreted as innocent, that others have interpreted as innocent. He has to interpret it. He has to apply some interpretative frame to it, he has to apply some theory to it to get the conclusion that he gets out of it. But he treats that whole process as if it were like smelling something, as if it were like sensitivity. It's almost like a sixth sense. And there's a point in here where it's. It's almost sounds like he's a prophet, which is right. So he's having a vision in a way. It's not a vision literally, because he hasn't seen anything, but it's a vision in that metaphorical sense. And this is not surprising because he's going to reject the Oracle's vision for his own vision. And in fact, he moves on to the oracle. Now, at this point, after saying that lacks sight only, he says, I don't need the Oracle circle. I'm just going to do it to help put you guys at ease. Especially you, Antigonus, because you're a baby, you're naive. And so, okay, I'm doing that for you guys. So give rest to the mind of others, such as he, whose ignorant credulity will not come up to the truth. Again, it's that others are naive. But you see a hint of his own doubt. And we're going to see other hints of this in the fact that he's consulting the Oracle. But his own oracular vision overrides anything else. And he's confusing again, it's like a critique of empiricism. He's confusing the vision of immediate awareness of his own mental states, that sort of empirical experience, if you want to call it that, with the collection of data out there in the real world, those two things are becoming conflated by.
39:21 Erin: I like that. I think I give your reading a lot of credence of this prophet like quality. But I think also it's like he's a God. He's speaking things into existence. And so this is what I mean, where he says basically around 150, when he pinches Antigonus, it's like he's saying, I am going to pinch you, or even something less embodied. He says, as you feel doing thus. There's some passivity in that construction, almost. He doesn't say, I am going to pinch you. He says, as you feel doing thus. He's taken himself out of the subject position in that sentence. So it's like saying, you are going to be Pinched. And then you pinch them. Right. So there's something in that, speaking something into existence. I believe you cheated on me there. You did it. Right. So there's something also, like, I think, that goes further than a prophet. It. That is like, literally making it happen by thinking it thus. Like he says, though I am satisfied and need no more than what I know, yet shall the oracle give rest to the mind of others. Right. I don't need anything more than what I know, because what I know is the truth. Because what I think happens, produces result in the world.
40:36 Wes: It socially constructs reality.
40:38 Erin: That's right. But. But it does, though.
40:40 Wes: Thinking makes it so.
40:41 Erin: Well, that's exactly. That's exactly what I put down. I was put in mind of the famous dictum from the poet William Carlos Williams, who said, no ideas, but in things. Right. Leontes reverses that like nothing but an idea. Right. Ideas first. That's it. Only ideas. Those are the things.
41:01 Wes: He's a discourse theorist, he's a disciple of Foucault, but in any case, terrifying. And I think the. The. Again, what I see is the opposing. I don't know, it's. Epistemological theory is a bit of a strong way to put it, but the opposing theory is represented in the persuasiveness of Paulina and Hermione and their ability to speak credibly and persuasively. So we get some of that in the prison scene and where Paulina goes to. She's going to try and get the baby out of the. You know, so basically, Hermione's given birth in prison and Paulina wants to take it to Leontes to try and see if that will help him, if that will soften him. And the guard is confused about whether or not. Right. The baby's in prison as well, and Paulina is. Right. Can I let you know, am I allowed to let the baby out? She was in prison with the baby. And so Paulina's argument is just that, hey, the womb is like a prison, and when we're born, we're freed from prison. So the baby has been freed, so therefore it's free to leave this prison. Really? Yeah, It's. It's not. So it's metaphorical, analogical reasoning. We talked a lot about this in Much Ado About Nothing as well. And Shakespeare's always ruminating about this. And is it. On the face of it, it's not legitimate. Right. This isn't. If you had a logician examine this and ask whether this is a valid argument, they Would of course say it's not. This doesn't imply anything that you can come up with a metaphor about birth as being freed from the womb. But on the other hand, there is something to this. And. And there's a kind of rationality and persuasiveness to Paulina that is lacking, sorely lacking in other. And I think it's the same with Hermione, the only two people who can speak persuasively. What do you make of this? It's an argument which doesn't work. Literal is the wrong word, but on some literal level, but metaphorically, I think there's something to it and it's. It accrues to her credibility.
43:26 Erin: Yeah, it's witty. And wit is its own evidence, according to this logic. Right. Like it's perfect.
43:32 Wes: Perfect way to put it. Yes.
43:35 Erin: It's somehow enchanted language. Like this is the language that actually makes things happen, as opposed to Leontes language which kills things. Right. It's over determined or something. So when Paulinus says, I'll use that tongue I have, if wit flow from it as boldness from my bosom, let's not be doubted, I shall do good. Good. That's the exact opposite in effect. And cast from what Leontes says, even if it runs a little bit parallel to it. Right. I'm going to argue my way out of this. I'm going to think my way. I'm going to wit my way out of this. Right. Which is what Leontes does, but he shuts everything down with a sort of lack of wit, of sparkle by the deadly. What do we want to call it? The banality of his own thoughts. Right. Something. Something which is overly determined, which shuts things down, which is too. It lacks wit. It's. It's like saying you. I say you did this, so you did it. Ha. That's. That's not clever. That's not interesting. But somehow being witty, that. That makes things happen, that works. That's a logic of its own.
44:39 Wes: Well, it really does. Yeah. It really does make things happen in the world. So when ideas are communicated in certain ways, they really do affect the world. For Leontes, there is no act of communicating and persuading and linking up with other people to make things happen. It's just the world is supposedly the way it is because he thinks it is the way it is.
45:02 Erin: Well, but here's my problem though. He does make things happen. They're bad things, but they do happen. Because of his thoughts, Hermione prematurely delivers Perdita because of stress. That's the first bad thing that happens, right? She's stressed out, so she has the baby. Baby. He's put her in danger. He's put the baby in danger. Then he drives. It's a little ridiculous, right? But he drives both Mamilius and Hermione to death by this psychological torture. So, in fact, this is what. This is where I arrived, I think, at the very beginning of our discussion when I mentioned the fact that I had had those blood test results that showed that stress was having an effect on my immune system. And I thought that was insane. How could I possibly have thought myself into some state that would show up on a blood test, right? That seemed like impossible. And. But this is true. This is what happens, and this is what Leontes does. So though he is lacking wit, his thoughts are still having an effect on a world, and they're on the world, and they're still effectual in that he has a wish and he experiences wish fulfillment in the most incredible way, which is he gets rid of two people. He wants to die.
46:17 Wes: Yeah, you have me now. Yeah. Thinking about what's the difference between persuasiveness in Paulina's case and the way that can make things happen in the world, and the way jealousy and vengeful behavior predicated on that jealousy, can make things happen, I think one of the differences is that, right, Paulina can win over other people. She can make things happen in other people's minds, not just in the world. Do you see what I'm saying? Leontes persuades no one. He doesn't alter other minds the way Paulina does. And so when she, to the extent that she makes anything happen, it is a social collective project that always involves other people. And for him, it's just tyrannical use of force.
47:08 Erin: You're pointing me to this incredible statement that the jailer makes, right? Paulina gives her funny, witty legal justification for freeing the baby. She says, well, the jailer is concerned that if he lets the baby out, he's going to get in trouble. And Paulina says, you need not fear it, sir. This child was prisoner to the womb and is by law and process of great nature, thus offense freed and enfranchised, not a party to the anger of the king, nor guilty of, if any be, the trespass of the queen.
47:37 Wes: And the jailer says, those are actually good arguments, but. But go ahead. Yeah, yeah.
47:41 Erin: And the jailer says, I do believe it, right? It's like amen and hallelujah, right? She. So this is the exact illustration, I think, of what you're talking about, which is that he. She has literally gotten him to. To believe what she wants him to. Like he has assented to belief. She's convinced him she doesn't have to
48:01 Wes: break Hermione, the baby, or just the baby out of jail. Right. And do it deceptively or by force. She can. She can alter the mind of another. And. And yeah, this whole question of force versus persuasion. Very long history. Philosophically, Plato ruminates on it a lot. When are we just manipulating people? Also kind of a sub question here. And when are we legitimately just changing their point of view in the way that preserves their agency? Is that what she's doing here, or. I think it's complicated. But the important part is that she's doing something that Leontes is not capable of doing. He's capable of persuading himself. That's it.
48:43 Erin: Well, the. I do believe it. What does Paulina say at the very end of the play? Sorry for jumping there, but it's important here, I think. Awake your faith. Right. That's what she instructs everyone to do. Wake your faith. So she says, I do believe it. This is like she's imbued faith into him by giving this witty argument. What Leontes does, obviously, is like he vacates faith and trust. Right. He's faithless and accuses Hermione of being faithful.
49:19 Wes: Yeah, good point.
49:21 Wes: Because again, the extent to which there's an element of faith involved in accurately reading the world, we have to rely on others. We have to rely on their secondhand reports. We have to rely on our understanding of psychology to evaluate them and their reports so that we, you know, so maybe faith is the wrong word because we're doing that. We're doing checks. But I think in some larger sense, there's. There's. There's a faith in what I've called the chain of. Discursive, chain of custody. The. The idea that our. That on the whole, The. The fact that our knowledge is largely secondhand and comes from others is. Is something we can rely on. The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they reject that. And the same thing with crazy, jealous people who won't listen to their advisors. They can't depend on anyone, not even Paulina, to set them straight.
50:12 Erin: Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about wittiness also as fertility and a lack of wit as barrenness. And that leads me to scene three. If we could jump there. Unless we.
50:26 Wes: Yeah, we got one more scene before.
50:28 Erin: One more scene to go.
50:31 Erin: Well, this is where, you know, towards the beginning of the scene, we get the information that Mamelius is sick. And the explanation we get from Leontes is that he's conceived the dishonor of his mother. Leontes says, conceiving the dishonor of his mother, he straight declined, drooped, took it deeply, fastened and fixed the shame on it in himself, threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, and downright languished. I love that. Like, I just. He drooped. So this is interesting because Leontes says, actually he precedes this by saying to see his nobleness. So previously he said all he lacked was actual sight of Hermione and Polixenes affair for proof. Now, what he sees, what he is able to see is Mamilius thinking something, comprehending the sort of sin of his mother. So what he can see is another man having an idea. Right? His son is kind of a mirror of him. This is a very circular, barren kind of evidence. He. I think, because he's taking this as further evidence that he's correct in believing Hermione's infidelity, all it is is evidence that he's infected Mamilius with this thought. And in another kind of circle within a circle, which I have written here is I have circular logic. And I also have something else, which is the bastard conception. Has the conception that he is a bastard. That's what I wrote in the margin, which I think. I mean, is that so the conception that Mamillius has what he's conceived the dishonor of his mother. So it means he's realized his mother is adulterous and therefore that he is a bastard. This logic kind of extends to Mamelius as well. Right. At this point.
52:26 Erin: Because Perdita, right, not literally, but like Leontes, I think, by this point has had this idea that, like, even Mamilius is not his. Or.
52:36 Wes: Yeah, he might not. He can't know.
52:38 Erin: Yeah, right. Perdita is obviously the one who is conceived of as being the product of the adulterous union. But I think this is the example of this contagion that, like, it's spread to Mamilius too. So anyway, this thought is barren, right? It produces Mammalius, droops and languishes, loses his appetite and he throws off his spirit. So later we're gonna learn that he dies. It kills him. Maybe this is just what I'm talking about in terms of the barrenness and the lack of animating wit and just the lack of sense, I guess, in anything Leontes said is barren and kills. Perhaps because it's not animated by wit, which we. Which I think you argued about Polina's legal justification, that it's analogous, it reaches out to other things and therefore keeps itself alive. This is an idea that will be brought up in Act 4 with this. With this grafting right of two flowers onto each other that will keep the stock hearty. It's the same thing with an idea that if we can reach out to an analogy or to a simile or something like that, it refreshes our thoughts. It keeps them from getting inbred or something.
53:55 Erin: Yeah, maybe that's what I'm talking about here with Leontes. It's an inbred thought versus a refreshed, fertile, multi stranded thought that Paulina has with her wit.
54:08 Wes: Yeah, inbred is a great way to put it. He won't listen to others. He can't be informed by the minds of others. He. He's reproducing asexually, so to speak.
54:17 Erin: Yeah, yeah, I think we talked about that before. Yeah. This idea that, like, he's the father of his own thought and it has no mother, so there's something gross about the product.
54:25 Wes: Yeah, so, yeah, that's interesting. You know, again, and with the idea, you know, with Mamelius fixing the shame on himself, it's as if he's. Mamelius is the guilty one, in a sense. Again, it gets us back to your point about Emilius being the object of jealousy rather than Hermione. And I think it could be something to do with Mamelius approaching adolescence or something like that. Mamelius is the kind of emblem of the innocent, timeless youth that Leontes and Polixenes shared and their fusion. Then as Mamelius gets older, that is essentially lost. Hermione was asking, basically prying with Polixenes about, you know, what did you get up. What naughty stuff did you get up to as young men or as boys? And Polixenes had to plead that they were completely innocent until a certain point. So I think that's part of why Mimilius is to blame. It's not only for taking away some of the attentions of Hermione, but it's also because watching him get older and reach adulthood is a threat to the. To whatever fantasy he has of eternal shared youth with Polixenes. And again, this goes to the. The whole winner's tale question and how it is that we. That one generation bequeaths something to the next generation and lets go and is not simply threatened by it. And does that make sense so that you. Yeah. What types of communications are you giving? What types of stories are you telling? Are you telling the story that the central significance of it is? I'm gonna hold on for as long as I'm gonna Feinstein this all the way. Gonna have to pry power and everything else out of my cold, dead hands. I'm never gonna retire. And Or. Or I'm going to recommend you go into plastics. I'm going to kill all your dreams, even as I pretend that you're. That I'm trying to help you fulfill your dreams, young person, you know? Or are you telling a tale of. A sad tale of mourning? Are you living and communicating in a way that actually paves the way for the next generation? That abjures rough magic, right? That abjures power and lets them come into their. Into their own? I think that's really interesting. And in light of all that, this idea of Mimilius taking the shame on
56:57 Erin: himself, I love that. And you're helping me see clearly here what I think I was inclined to read as glee in Leontes description of Mamilius's decline to see his nobleness. You know, he's straight, declined, drooped, took it deeply, fastened and fixed the shame on it himself, right? We get all this alliteration, which is like delightful, or he's delighted that Mamillius is so upset, not only because he takes Mamilius reaction as proof of Hermione's guilt, which is of course ouroboric, as I've already suggested, right? He's put this idea into his head and then is happy to see it flourish there, but also he's happy that this is an idea that's taking the wished for effect, which is it's destroying Mamelius, it's destroying Leontes. Competition. Yeah, yeah. Sick, creepy.
57:54 Wes: Yeah. And the way this scene ends, we get to really get a good picture of how paranoid Leontes is. And this whole theme of sickness comes up again because Paulina, she comes in with the baby and he can't sleep because he's been so worked up about all this. And she comes in saying, I'm bringing basically medicinal words. She can use words to relieve him of his sickness. So again, that speaks to why it is that her persuasiveness is important. And what he does at this point point is he has a ton of just great insults for her mankind. Witch, intelligencing, bawd, dame, partlet, crone, basically.
58:47 Erin: Cause if I had a nickel, if I had a nickel for every time I was called an intelligence bod, you
58:54 Wes: know, intelligencing bod on a body planet. And at a certain point he looks at Antigonus and says he dreads his wife. As if Paulina's forcefulness and her persuasiveness had to be chalked up to something about a failure of the husband to rein her in. I don't know what more to say about that, except to mention another one of these insults. A callot of boundless tongue who had late beat her husband. Husband. This idea that her persuasiveness is actually. It's nagging or it's the subjugation of the husband, it's the browbeating of the husband into submission. And it points to, you know, I was talking about persuasiveness versus manipulation. But it could also, you know, in the domain of manipulation is also just nagging, breaking people down by using words that basically are just unpleasant, right? Until someone just gives in, something like that. So in other words, he can't read reasoning and persuasiveness for what they are. He has to treat them cynically as a manipulative external force. Again, there's an opacity to it, to use the word that you were using. He can't look at the internal structure of it. It's just opaque to him. It's just brute force. And in this particular case, you know, he has to characterize it in terms of a nagging wife or a witch or however you want to put it.
1:00:33 Erin: Yeah, he sees her as oppressive, right? Like she, like he reads all power other than his own as oppressive and in particular, any kind of female power as distorted and perverse on top of. Right. So she has to be a distorted woman. She has to be a crone. Right. A woman kind of cannot be powerful. She has to be a witch. This is, yeah, just more evidence of his. Of this deep distrust of women and this misogyny that goes back to Polixenes account of their childhood in which the entrance of women signals the entrance of sin and something distorted, something perverse. And Paulina rightly, I think, directs him back to himself, says, no, no, no, you're the perverse one, you're the oppressive one. It's all coming back to you, right? She says around 83, 84, Leontes says, a nest of traitors. Antigonus defends himself. I am none by this good light. Like, yeah, thanks a lot, Antigonus, for backing up your wife too. Thanks for. Thanks for jumping to your own defense. Per usual, this guy's worthless. I don't know what Paulina ever saw on him. Anyway, and then, well, she does.
1:01:44 Wes: She obviously actually does. Does wear the pants in the relationship, let's face it. But go ahead.
1:01:48 Erin: Well, well, but. But for good reason, because I'm not a fan of Antigonus. But anyway, you know that Paulina says, nor I, nor any, but one that's here and that's himself. For he, the sacred honor of himself, his queens, his hopeful sons, his babes, betrays to slander, whose sting is sharper than the swords and will not. For as the case now stands, it is a curse. He cannot be compelled to it once remove the root of his opinion, which is rotten as ever oak or stone was sound. So he's the traitor to himself. He's the sick one, he's the distorted one. He's the perverse one, Right? So. So he's accusing everybody else of being sick, rotten, witchy, a crone, Right. Like some. Some perverted form of themselves, right? Really, he's the one who's rotten. And all he can do to respond to that is to say, as you already said, a Khaled of boundless tongue who late has beat her husband and now baits me. Right again. It's wonderful that he just responds with more of the same. Right? Because that's exactly what she's saying is like he's recursive, he's ouroboric, he can't get out of his own way. He's stuck in a. He's like on an adulterous treadmill or a sick treadmill. And so what does he do? He just. Bam. You're a cowet. You're a witch. Right? Yeah. He can't get out of it. He can't be broken out of the pattern until that fateful moment when he finally is broken out of it. Right? But even the oracle won't convince him otherwise until the death. Yeah, yeah.
1:03:25 Wes: Paulina could have her own, like, talk show. Oh, you tell me about that stray talk with Paulina. Or maybe Judge, Judge Pauline in there. But. And she's.
1:03:35 Erin: I love these.
1:03:36 Wes: Right. The reason why Antigonus looks bad is because she's the only one willing to stand up to him. Standing up to him. Standing up to Leontes, of course, means risking one's life, and he repeatedly threatens to basically burn her alive along with the baby. And it's a very dangerous project, but only she is willing to do it. The larger upshot of all this is it's also about his unwillingness to listen to the other lords and counsel and thinking through and testing. I think someone says, you know, why not do a trial? Why not do an actual investigation of this? And he says he doesn't need it. So when he calls what she's doing witchcraft at some point, an excellent piece of witchcraft or nagging, this kind of combination of the idea of a wife. Again, old wife, old wife's tale, but as a wife, as a source of nagging and browbeating, but also maybe as a source of manipulation and witchery. The magic. You know, the kind of. The magic of women and how they make things happen in the world, which, of course, is associated with their being mothers and having babies and things like that. So for him, anything to do with consulting others or consulting reason or doing an investigation, any interactive thing like that that doesn't simply involve him observing his own mind and the force of his own feelings, all those things are forms of witchery which precisely reverses a situation. Again, we talked about. About his omnipotence of thought and omniscience of thought, as if he can make something true by just having the feeling. That's the witchery. For him, the witchery is any potential influence that others might have in moderating, as he puts it, in moderating the extremeness of his opinions and his mental states. He's not. He doesn't just believe something. He's. He's attached to. Firmly attached to that belief.
1:05:47 Erin: You're. I just want to give you more credit for this. Paulina should have her own chat show thing. That is so funny. Your own talk show, because you're reminding me of. Remember that episode of 30 Rock where Liz gets her own. Her own chat show and she has that. That tagline. That's a deal breaker. Do you remember that?
1:06:06 Wes: Oh, no, I don't remember it, unfortunately.
1:06:08 Erin: Oh, my gosh, it's been so long. It's like. This is like Paulina, this is amazing. It's. If your guy can't listen to reason, then if he accuses you of cheating and the only proof he needs is his own thoughts, that's a deal breaker, ladies. You know?
1:06:22 Wes: Okay. This is actually. Yeah, no, I think I'm vaguely. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Would it be amazing? You know, you could do it if someone could do a skit and do, like, legitimate Shakespearean dialogue, You know, just do a whole Paulinus talk show episode. But all in Shakespeare parlance, that would be amazing.
1:06:44 Erin: Be awesome. If he calls you a cowlet and says you are nothing but a blah blah, you know? Yeah, that's a deal breaker.
1:06:51 Wes: If he calleth without a callet,
1:06:56 Erin: he hath broke Faith with you.
1:06:59 Wes: Yeah. Okay. Any. Any final words before we wrap this up?
1:07:07 Erin: Let's see, in relation to the magic quality of women that you're talking about. And maybe some further passivity, kind of passive construction again, that Leontes uses to distance himself from the reality of his own thoughts and thereby take them as evidence, as if he's just coming upon something in a field that has nothing to do with him. I'm thinking of line, round line, 1, 7. 78, when he talks about what should happen to this baby, because Paulina has meanwhile brought in the baby to show to him, and he says, as by strange fortune, it came to us. Right. It just puts me in mind of what you're saying about this magical quality. Like, you know, that this baby is like a changeling that's just shown up on their doorstep. He removes Hermione's, you know, this adulterous act from him, and also, at the same time, admits the mysterious magical quality of childbirth, too, within this idea that it came to us by strange fortune. That's the way any child comes to you.
1:08:18 Erin: You know, even if you're a mother, you give birth to this baby, it's always going to be, you know, that child is always going to be a kind of strange fortune. Right. Um, and so this turn of phrase is really evocative for me. And he says that he commends it strange or. Or he asks Antigonus, rather, to commend it strangely to some place where chance may nurse or end it. That's another really interesting.
1:08:44 Wes: Yeah. Make nature the mother. Later on, Antigonus will say, ravens be thy nurses. He's hoping that the child would be brought up by raven, so. Hoping that. Hoping against hope that somehow the child would survive with nature, in a sense, as the mother. But, yeah, I made a note too, of this. Commend it strangely to some place, which I take to be commended. In a foreign locale. Right. That's the main meaning of that. Or as alone. Right. Alone and as stranger in some place. Yeah. But it's also like the word strange is also evocative of witchery, which is something that's come up several times in this scene.
1:09:36 Erin: Exactly. Yeah. It's like instead of the expression easy come, easy go, it's strangely come, strangely go. We have no idea how it got here. I did not have sexual relations with this woman, so I don't know how this happened. And then it's going to leave to this passivity that admits no responsibility for the child and allows him to psychologically abandon it. Even when it's in front of him, as he's already kind of mentally abandoned it for a good act and a half now.
1:10:09 Wes: And it does, you know, it is another reminder of the child childhood theory of sexuality. The stork bringing something or taking it away as if he's disgusted by the whole concept of the biology of birth. Who knows how it got here? I don't want to think about that. And now I'm going to give it a kind of rebirth that is also a killing. But I'm going to bring it into being in some other locale where I'm not as freaked out by the sexually reproductive nature of all this. As I had pointed out before. I think the old wives tale or fairy tales, these things are to some extent in some cases related to childhood perceptions of the world, including sexuality, and as defenses against or as theories or sublimations of ideas, raw, more raw ideas about sexuality and aggression and all the rest of it. So in a sense, he's creating. It becomes more of a winner's tale in the Acts 3 through 5. Right. And then the reason why we spent so much time discussing the first two acts is this is all the psychological thriller. This is where all the, the psychological thriller element of the. The play happens. And the second half is going to be all, all fairy tale land in a way, or old wives tale land in a way with lots of implausible things happening. Okay, so we are through Act 2, I think. Yes. In the next two parts of this, we will theoretically cover the rest of the play. I think that is possible.
1:11:56 Erin: I think so.
1:11:57 Wes: I don't. You know, again, I think you. If the second half of the play is more. It's a completely different animal and it's also going to be a less time consuming animal, especially given all the setup that we've done with the psychology and the first four parts of our discussion.
1:12:16 Erin: That's right. That's right. And we keep referring to the last two acts, keep puncturing our discussion of the first three. So I think we've done quite a bit of setup and discussed some key points already.
1:12:30 Erin: Okay. Thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to lettersoubtextpodcast.com if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter njoysubtext.
