35 / 148
“There is no tongue that moves”
35
on texts and theory, and thus was limited and futile. Hence,
they are scorned in
Macbeth
: “Throw physic to the dogs!”
(Shakespeare, 1984: 148). As Marjorie Garber observes:
“[T]here are some Shakespearean characters who do appear
onstage and perform acts of restoration and healing seemingly
beyond those of professional physicians. Perhaps significantly,
all of these powerful figures are women” (1980: 107).
In this late romance, Shakespeare never mentions male
medical authorities but only appeals to his female practitioners,
who are portrayed as being able to heal, or save, the soul as
well as the body. Of the two women healers discussed in the
play, Paulina most resembles the remarkable female
practitioners of sixteenth-century Bologna. “While it is clear
that women healers were excluded from the professional
practice of medicine,” Gianna Pomata informs us, “it should be
noted that several female figures were prominent among the
saints to whom the citizens of Bologna appealed in their
pressing need” (1998: 79). Pomata continues: “[i]n addition to
the Virgin Mary, whose cult left a long record of healing
miracles in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Bologna, other
women saints were paramount among the city’s supernatural
healers” (79). All these women healers have distinguished
themselves through their use of practical knowledge, empirical
experience, openness to the spiritual or supernatural world,
and human kindness. On Shakespeare’s stage they also wielded
the power of compassionate and witty language.
Sustained by its two women healers
—
Hermione and
Paulina
—
The Winter’s Tale
shows us both the problematic
status of, and the significant role played by, women healers in
history. These two female characters possess quick wits and
powerful rhetoric, and their own actions seem, like those of
historical women medical practitioners, to be unlicensed and
unbound. Hermione can represent all the silenced and
prosecuted women healers and Paulina the strong and