Breathe in . . . breathe out

I have one more thing I wanted to mention about A Winter's Tale and how the story is told.  I mentioned once (can't remember where, maybe a comment on a friend's blog or actually a post of my own) how it's kind of hard to mark the genre the play fits in.  Is it a tragedy?  Well, yes, but not enough people die in the end.  How about a romance?  Sort of, but only in the second half of the play and it's fairly shallow.  How about a history?  Haha!  Yeah right.  A comedy?  Well, Wikipedia thinks so, but I have a hard time putting it there due to the heaviness of the first half of the play.

I've decided to think of the genre as relaxant.  While there could be connotations of the word relaxant being linked to a drug, I try to think more of the end result of religion, especially Christianity, in that it can bring reprieve.  Some would say religion is a drug, and like I said, it can be useful that way, but I can't really say that Shakespeare agreed with Marx's philosophy.  I sure don't.  Anywho, enough about Marx.  Quack quack, I need to get back on track.

I find the overall direction of the play to be similar to relaxation techniques for the muscles.  First, tense the muscles, then relax them in order to be more at ease.  It's a pretty simple analogy, but I like it quite a bit.  The fact that the first half is dark and very tense, followed by the airy, springy, and light second adds to the effect the Christian message of faith has in the end.  Actually feeling the relief with King Leontes when he gets his wife and daughter back after he's truly repented (which subject I've touched upon--read the comments my friends left!), having experienced the tense feelings of injustice when it happened beforehand; both cause reflection on my actions, lest I too, am caused to grieve due to my unjust actions.  I've often thought as Shakespeare as an ideology in and of itself.  More on that later though.