2 / 148
2
E
UR
A
MERICA
public order and the minds of the men who control it,
restoring circulation in both to a state of health.
On the one hand, Paulina’s words, which operate
both magically and therapeutically, turn King
Leontes’s diseased speech into what sounds like
repentance. On the other hand, the marble-like statue
of his queen, Hermione, who has supposedly been
dead ever since the trial at which her husband
accused her of adultery, is “reanimated” by Paulina’s
magical utterance. Here we have the traditional
midwife enabling a symbolic rebirth in the final scene
of the play, which again suggests the restoration of a
healthy public order, or in alchemical and Paracelsian
terms, the refinement or transmutation of lead/death
into gold/life.
Key Words:
The Winter’s Tale
, woman healers,
midwifery, Paracelsus, sixteenth-century
England