Old Play in Manhattan

The Winter's Tale (by William Shakespeare; produced by The Theatre Guild) dates from that final period of Shakespeare's when reality--even real people--had seemingly begun to bore him. His plays became such stuff as dreams are made on--fantastic, capricious, inconsecutive, at times nightmarish. Shakespeare's brain begot such villains and monsters as Iachimo in Cymbeline, Caliban in The Tempest, Leontes in The Winter's Tale. But terror and tragedy took shape only to melt away at last in benign late-afternoon sunlight.

For more than half the way The Winter's Tale is harsh, high-busted melodrama. On flimsy grounds King Leontes of Sicilia (Henry Daniell) inflames his own imagination with insanely jealous suspicions of his Queen and Polixenes, King of Bohemia:

Is whispering nothing?

Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?

Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career

Of laughter with a sigh?

He decides that the Queen is an adulteress, her infant daughter not his. He orders the child to be abandoned and puts Queen Hermione (Jesse Royce Landis) on trial for her life. Then the sudden death of his beloved older child, followed by the apparent death of the accused Queen, combine to open Leontes' eyes to reason, his mind to remorse.

Sixteen years pass by and the banished babe is now a charming shepherdess loved by a prince. Peasants dance, bumpkins clown, rogues play tricks, and after a few fairy-tale snags, everyone is reunited and lives happily ever after.

This yarn of all weathers--in which Shakespeare brought "dead" queens back to life, gave Bohemia a seacoast and tossed the wondrous stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear"--is not often, or easily, produced. Last week it got a fairly good production, turned out to be a fairly lively evening. If the hey-nonny-nonny sometimes breathed a desperate gaiety, most of the melodrama was pretty sound theater. And there were snatches of much-loved poetry (Daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty. . .). Most Shakespearean in reciting his lines (though he fell short in acting) was Actor Daniell. But word-spitting, eye-flashing, more-sulphurous-than-Shakespearean Florence Reed (The Shanghai Gesture) seemed to have the most fun.

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