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“There is no tongue that moves”
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skillful early modern midwives before her, Paulina predicts the
hour of Hermione’s (re)birth and prepares for it with her
unique remedy: a play. This performance tests the effects of
the purging of Leontes’s infection, that is, of his great remorse,
for a complete purification would ensure the life of the
newborn infant, in this case a revived Hermione.
Like an observant midwife, Paulina senses Leontes’s
desire to see his wife again when he tries to stop her from
closing the curtain after he sees her statue: his wanting to see
her is a sign that this is a propitious time for Hermione to be
(re)born (5.3.59). The lifelike statue of Hermione serves both
to remind him of his past guilt (“I am ashamed. / … My evils
conjured to remembrance” 5.3.38,40) and as the sole cure for
his deep sense of remorse (“No settled senses of the world can
match / The pleasure of that madness” 5.3.72-73). Leontes’s
destructive madness has now been transformed into a
“pleasure of madness”
—
a renewed love for his queen
—
because
their separation has lasted just long enough. This is shown in
the way he gazes attentively and affectionately at her wrinkles,
veins, and eyes, as if each part of her has become integrated
after she had been “decomposed” (as well as discomposed) by
his angry rhetoric years earlier. At this point, then, Paulina the
healer feels Leontes may be allowed to touch his living queen
again, just as he has been touching her statue-like body and
remarking on its warmth (“Oh, she’s warm” 5.3.109). That is,
she knows the penitent Leontes is ready for Hermione to be
“reborn” and that this is the right moment for her, as midwife,
to perform the ritual that will bring this rebirth about.
Paul.
It is required
You do awake your faith. Then all stand still.
On; those that think it is
unlawful business
I am about, let them depart. (
emphasis added,
5.3.94-97)