Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare’s Plays

Abstract

In the penultimate scene of The Winter’s Tale (1610), the Third Gentleman describes Hermione’s statue as ‘a piece many years in doing and now newly performed’ by the artist Giulio Romano.¹ This tantalizing clue about the material process of making the statue challenges any simple identification of the work as Giulio Romano’s, but the phrase ‘newly performed’ also has implications for our reading of the text itself. When the statue of Hermione comes to life in act 5, the miracle is explicitly construed as a theatrical performance choreographed by Paulina. The association between visual art and live theater is thus established by the phrase ‘newly performed’ and then materialized in the play’s final scene, which trades the artfulness of the statue for the miracle of the living actor. The fact that the piece has been ‘many years in doing’ and is now ‘newly performed by that rare Italian master’ suggests an analogy between Romano and Shakespeare, who has created his play by revising an existing artwork, the prose romance Pandosto (5.2.95-6; 301A). At the same time, the revelation of the actor’s body behind the guise of the statue also signals the emergence of a new type of theatrical event. The Winter’s Tale thus acknowledges its own influences while calling attention to the ways in which Shakespeare has reconfigured existing dramatic forms.