SOURCE: Lim, Walter S. H. “Knowledge and Belief in The Winter's Tale.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 41, no. 2 (spring 2001): 317-34.

In the following essay, Lim studies the way in which elements of The Winter's Tale, particularly the animation of Hermione's statue at the play's end, represent the conflict between Reformation and Catholic thought in Shakespeare's England.

At the narrative moment immediately preceding the animation of Hermione's statue, Paulina exhorts Leontes, “It is requir'd / You do awake your faith.”¹ Faith in what? For Leontes, it is faith in the reality of miracles, the coming back to life of a queen who has been dead sixteen long years. For William Shakespeare's audience, it is faith tied to the willing suspension of disbelief, a readiness to accept that theater is capable of representing just about anything. But it is not only in the representational space of theater that the dead find...