SOURCE: “‘You speak a language that I understand not’: The Rhetoric of Animation in The Winter's Tale,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 1, Spring, 1997, pp. 17-44.

In the essay that follows, Enterline examines Shakespeare's interpretation of Ovidian and Petrarchan rhetoric as a means of discussing the role of power and the female voice in The Winter's Tale.

Between Leontes's opening imperative, “Tongue-tied our queen? Speak you” (1.2.28), and the final act, where Hermione as living statue returns to her husband yet says nothing directly to him, The Winter's Tale traces a complex, fascinated, and uneasy relation to female speech.¹ A play much noted for interrogating the “myriad forms of human narration”²—old tales, reports, ballads, oracles—The Winter's Tale begins its investigation of language when Hermione tellingly jests to Polixenes, “Verily, / You shall not go; a lady's ‘verily’ is / As potent as a lord's” (ll. 49-51), for Leontes's swift turn...