

“There is no tongue that moves”
33
Paulina also invites Leontes to fully accept his newborn wife,
for denying her would be like killing her a second time, while
such acceptance would connote that the king’s heart has been
entirely purified, and harbors no more feelings of envy or
jealousy:
Paul.
Do not shun her
Until you see her die again, for then
You kill her double. Nay, present your hand.
(5.3.105-107)
The king’s willing hand prompts the queen’s two hands to
make a circle to embrace him, a circle symbolizing reunion and
reconciliation. Thus the king is fully healed by touching the
queen whom had (he thought) been stone, just as in alchemical
medicine it is essential to have, in order to completely heal or
cure someone, a
tinctura
or Philosopher’s Stone. Paracelsus
explains that “
Tinctura
, the last arcanum, is like the
rebis
—
the
bisexual creature
—
which transmutes silver and other metals
into gold; it “tinges,” i.e., it transforms the body, removing its
harmful parts, its crudity, its incompleteness, and transforms
everything into a pure, noble, and indestructible being” (1958:
148). Hermione’s (re)birth is not fully completed, however,
until her daughter, the lost Perdita, is found, for only then can
she fully recover her own voice and language.
The animation of the “stone statue,” which means the
beginning of Hermione’s (re)birth, begins with a deception,
that of the queen’s death. Indeed all magical acts and plays
depend on deception in order to make the impossible possible,
in this case to make the king once again completely love and
trust his queen and she him. More generally, deception allows
the power of women to be recognized and accepted, not as an
evil or witch’s power which gives rise to male anxiety, but as a
loving, healing power, a holy power. Deception is perhaps the
only choice for female healers when their freedom to heal