Abstract
‘Nowhere,’ Jonathan Bate writes of the final scene in The Winter’s Tale, ‘is there a creative coup more wonderful.’1 Indeed, Paulina’s carefully orchestrated unveiling of the marvelous statue astonishes, perplexes, and surprises, holding on-stage spectators and theater audiences alike rapt with wonder. But if Shakespeare seeks, with Paulina, to ‘strike all that look upon’ his spectacle ‘with marvel,’ he also self-reflexively explores the nature of theatrical wonder itself in this play.2 Contrasting the admiration aroused by Paulina’s wondrous statue with that elicited by Autolycus’s dazzling but duplicitous theatrics, he raises compelling questions about the role of trickery, sense perception, and collective desire in the production of theatrical wonder. He asks, too, why verbal accounts reporting the ‘admiration,’ ‘notable passion of wonder,’ and ‘deal of wonder’ aroused when Perdita’s true identity is discovered fail to produce the feelings of wonder they describe (5.2.10, 13–14, 21). And, by invoking the language of religious awe at the dramatic unveiling of the statue, he entertains a relation between theological and theatrical wonder.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Works cited
Ainsworth, Henry. An arrow against idolatrie. Amsterdam, 1624.
Barkan, Leonard. ‘“Living Sculptures”: Ovid, Michelangelo, and The Winter’s Tale,’ ELH 48 (1981): 639–67.
Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Bernard, Richard. The faithfull shepheard, amended and enlarged: with the shepheards practise in preaching annexed thereunto. London, 1609.
Bishop, T. G. Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Bucer, Martin. A treatise declaryng [and] shewing dyvers causes … that pyctures & other ymages which were wont to be worshypped, ar i[n] no wise to be suffred in the temples and churches of Christen men. London, 1535.
Calvin, John. The Catechisme, or Manner to teache children the Christian religion. London, 1582.
Calvin, John. A commentarie on the Whole Epistle to the Herbrewes. London, 1605.
Calvin, John. A commentarie upon S. Paules epistle to the Corinthians. Trans. Thomas Timme. London, 1577.
Calvin, John. A commentarie upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romanes. Trans. Christopher Rosdell. London, 1583.
Calvin, John. The commentaries of M. John Calvin upon the Actes of the Apostles. Trans. Christopher Fetherstone. London, 1585.
Calvin, John. Institutes of Christian Religion. Trans. Thomas Norton. London, 1562.
Calvin, John. The sermons of M. J. Calvin, upon the Epistle of S. Paule too the Ephesians. Trans. Arthur Golding. London, 1577.
‘The Contents of a Book of Articles devised by the King’ (1538). Qtd. in John Foxe, Actes and Monuments. London, 1563.
Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille. ‘Trompe l’Oeil: The Underestimated Trick.’ In Deceptions and Illusions. Ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002.
Gash, Anthony. ‘Shakespeare, Carnival and the Sacred: The Winter’s Tale and Measure for Measure.’ In Shakespeare and Carnival After Bakhtin. Ed. Ronald Knowles. London: Macmillan, 1998.
Gosson, Stephen. Playes Confuted in Five Acts. London, 1582.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Heywood, Thomas. An Apology for Actors. London, 1612.
‘An Homily Against perill of Idolatrie and superfluous decking of Churches in the time of Queen Elizabeth.’ In Certain Sermons or Homilies appointed to be read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth I. London, 1623.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Luther, Martin. A commentarie of M. Doctor Martin Luther upon the Epistle of S. Paul to the Galathians. London, 1602.
O’Connell, Michael. The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Perkins, William. A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft. Cambridge, 1608.
Perkins, William, Michael. A reformed Catholike. Cambridge, 1597.
Perkins, William, Michael. A warning against the idolatrie of the last times. Cambridge, 1601.
Platt, Peter. Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Rankins, William. A Mirrour of Monsters. London, 1587.
Roberts, Gareth. ‘“An art lawful as eating”? Magic in The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.’ In Shakespeare’s Late Plays: New Readings. Ed. Jennifer Richards and James Knowles. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Shakespeare, William. ‘The Winter’s Tale.’ In The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 1997.
A shorte Cathechisme: A briefe and godly bringing up of youth in knowledge and commandements of God. London, 1550.
Stoichita, Victor I. Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art. London: Reakton Books, 1995.
Torsellino, Orazio. The History of our B. Lady of Loreto. Saint-Omer, 1608.
Vanita, Ruth. ‘Mariological Memory in The Winter’s Tale and Henry VIII.’ Studies in English Literature 40 (2000): 311–37.
Weimann, Robert. Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse. Ed. David Hillman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Diehl, H. (2005). ‘Strike All that Look Upon With Marvel’: Theatrical and Theological Wonder in The Winter’s Tale. In: Reynolds, B., West, W.N. (eds) Rematerializing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505032_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505032_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54264-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50503-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)