Join Dr. Esolen tonight, July 8th, at 8 PM for the third meeting of his summer book club discussion of mercy and justice in works by William Shakespeare. The play for Session 3 is A Winter’s Tale. These lectures are free and open to everyone, but you do need to register (also free) at the ICC website. We hope that some of you will be able to attend.
Tony & Debra
Event Description
Are mercy and justice opposed to each other? How do we balance the letter and the spirit of the law? Is mercy strength or weakness? Join Dr. Anthony Esolen to explore themes of mercy and justice in three of William Shakespeare's most famous plays: The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale.
Recommended edition: Signet Classic Shakespeare series. You can find the complete edition of all Shakespeare's works here, or you can purchase the individual paperbacks for each play, which are linked below.
About the Plays
Session 1: The Merchant of Venice is Shakespeare's most trenchant and deeply human treatment of what law is, what it is for, and how by the letter of the law, "in the course of justice none of us / Should see salvation." Mercy here is related to gratitude, in an economy of grace and gifts, for both the giver and the receiver. If there is no gratitude, there is no feast.
Session 2: In Measure for Measure, whose title comes from the Sermon on the Mount, we see what an insistence on the severity of the law can do to bring about injustice, as a lax enforcement of the law brings about dissipation. The central character, the heroine Isabella, is called upon to use the very letter of the law to show mercy to a puritanical man who is morally, if not as a matter of fact, guilty of rape and murder. But she herself has erred on the side of severity in her personal life, and so she too must have her eyes opened and her heart softened.
Session 3: The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's final plays, a romance—and the keynote for the romance is wonder. King Leontes, a jealous man, has condemned to death his wife Hermione for adultery with his best friend, King Polixenes. His jealousy has eaten away at his mind like a cancer. It will cost him dearly; but in this play, as in his other romances, Shakespeare has in store for us a kind of resurrection from the dead.
Study Questions for The Winter’s Tale:1. Why is this play called The Winter's Tale?
2. What specific detail of time makes Leontes' suspicions both possible and absurd?
3. How does Shakespeare show that innocent behavior may be viewed by a diseased mind?4. How does the providential arc of the play depend upon the faithful and energetic actions of Camillo and Paulina?
5. It is usually supposed, with great justification, that the actor who plays Antigonus returns on the state in the second half of the play to play Autolycus. If the audience perceives that this is so, what should they gather from it?
6. Why should Shakespeare have shepherds find the child?
7. How is the plot of the first half of the play repeated, in romantic / comic form, in Bohemia in the second half of the play?
8. Autolycus calls himself "a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." What from Scripture is he unconsciously echoing?
9. Why should Paulina become the spiritual counselor to Leontes?
10. Oracles usually speak in riddles. Why is it striking that this oracle, for the most part, speaks with absolute clarity?
11. Who in this play rises from the dead?
12. How are the themes of Christmas and Easter united in The Winter's Tale?
I just wanted to say "thank you" for sharing this series with us. I haven't been able to attend any live but have enjoyed the replays. Thank you!