Authors: Jeanette Winterson
The Gap of Time
Fiction
Art and Lies
Boating for Beginners
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Sexing the Cherry
The Passion
The Powerbook
Lighthousekeeping
The World and Other Places
Written on the Body
Gut Symmetries
Midsummer Nights (editor)
The Stone Gods
Weight
The Daylight Gate
Art Objects
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
The Lion the Unicorn and Me
The King of Capri
Tanglewreck
The Battle of the Sun
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Jeanette Winterson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Hogarth UK, a division of Random House Group Limited, a Penguin Random House company, London.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following:
BMG Rights Management (US) LLC for lyrics from “Shiver Me Timbers,” words and music by Tom Waits, copyright © 1974 by Fifth Floor Music Inc. (ASCAP). All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
BMG Rights Management (US) LLC for lyrics from “It's In His Kiss,” words and music by Rudy Clark, copyright © 1963 by Trio Music Company (BMI) / By The Bay Music (BMI). All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, for an excerpt from “For Sheridan” from
Collected Poems
by Robert Lowell, copyright © 2003 by Robert Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Hal Leonard Corporation for lyrics from “She's Always a Woman,” words and music by Billy Joel, copyright © 1977 by Impulsive Music. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Almo Music Corp. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. All rights reserved.
Music Sales Corporation for lyrics from “Mrs. Robinson,” words and music by Paul Simon, copyright © 1968, 1970 by Paul Simon (BMI). International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winterson, Jeanette, 1959â
The gap of time: a novel/Jeanette Winterson.âFirst United States edition.
pages ; cm.â(Hogarth Shakespeare)
“The Winter's tale retold.”
I. Shakespeare, William, 1564â1616. Winter's tale. II. Title.
PR6073.I558G37 2015
823'.914âdc23 2015022024
ISBNâ9780804141352
eBook ISBNâ9780804141369
Cover design by Christopher Brand
v4.1
ep
To Ruth Rendell 1930â2015
Past fifty, we learn with surprise and a sense
of suicidal absolution
that what we intended and failed
could never have happenedâ
and must be done better.
“For Sheridan,” Robert Lowell
The Place.
The play opens in Siciliaâone of Shakespeare's many fantasy islands.
The Time.
Invented.
The Story.
Polixenes, King of Bohemia, has been staying with his childhood friend Leontes, King of Sicilia, for the past nine months. Polixenes wants to go home. Leontes tries and fails to persuade him to stay.
Leontes's pregnant wife, Hermione, intervenes, and Polixenes agrees to stay a little longer.
But Leontes believes that Polixenes and Hermione are having an affair and the child she will soon give birth to belongs to Polixenes.
Leontes calls his manservant, Camillo, and orders him to poison Polixenes. Instead, Camillo warns Polixenes that Leontes intends to murder him. Polixenes escapes, taking Camillo with him.
Leontes is enraged at the escape and immediately and publicly accuses his wife of infidelity. He throws her in prisonâdeaf to the protests of the entire court, especially the noblewoman Paulina, the only person brave enough to stand up to Leontes.
Leontes hates the fact that no one believes his mad, vile denunciations of Hermione, and to avoid being called a tyrant he sends an envoy to consult the Oracle at Delphi.
Meanwhile, Hermione gives birth to a daughter. Leontes disowns the child as a bastard and decrees her death.
Paulina brings the child in to Leontes, hoping it will soften his rage. Instead he threatens to dash out its brains. Not quite able to face down Paulina, he agrees that the child can be taken to some remote place and cast out to fortune. Paulina's husband, Antigonus, must do the deed.
While Antigonus is gone, Leontes brings Hermione to trial, humiliating her in front of the Royal Court. The more he abuses her, the more dignified she seems, remarkable by her composure, and her steady denial of his madness.
In the middle of this kangaroo court, the Oracle is brought back from Delphi. The Oracle declares that Leontes is a jealous tyrant; that Hermione and Polixenes are innocent; that the baby is innocent and that Leontes will have no heir until the lost child is found.
Leontes flies into a frothing rage and declares the Oracle a lie. As he does so, a messenger runs in to tell him that young Mamilius, his only son, is dead.
Hermione collapses. Leontes repents. It is too late. The Queen is dead.
The Place.
Bohemia. Now part of the Czech Republic. It has never had a sea-coast.
The Story.
Antigonus leaves the baby, Perdita, on the shores of Bohemia, with money and some tokens of her birth, and tries to get away before the breaking storm. His ship capsizes. Antigonus is killed in the world's most famous stage direction:
Exit pursued by a bear.
The local rogue Autolycus notices everything but does nothing, other than pick a pocket or two, as Perdita is found by a poor shepherd and his dimwitted son, Clown. They take pity on the baby and bring her up as their own.
The Time.
Sixteen years later.
Prince Florizel, son of Polixenes, has fallen in love with Perdita. He believes she's a shepherd's daughter.
The scene is set at a joyful partyâthe sheep-shearing festival where our Shepherd and his son, the Clown, are rich, thanks to the money they found wrapped up with Perdita.
Florizel is pretending to be an ordinary guy, not a rich prince. Impulsively he offers to marry Perditaâand asks two older strangers to bear witness.
The strangers turn out to be his father Polixenes and Camillo in disguise.
While Perdita and Florizel declare their love, the rogue Autolycus is busy stealing everyone's money, and lying and entertaining his way through the feast.
He is Shakespeare's most lovable villainâwitty, mercurial and uncrushable. And the unlikely means to a happy endingâ¦
As the Clown is busy entertaining his lady friends, Mopsa and Dorcas, and the Shepherd is congratulating everyone on their good fortune, Polixenes rips off his disguise and threatens the whole party with instant death.
He storms off, ordering Florizel never to see Perdita again. Camillo realises this is his chance to go home. He offers to take Florizel and Perdita to Sicilia. They agree and escape.
Following behind come the Shepherd, the Clown and Autolycus.
The Place.
Sicilia.
The Time.
A fast-moving present.
The Story.
Florizel and Perdita arrive at Court. Leontes briefly falls for Perdita then discovers she's his own daughter, when the Shepherd and the Clown show up with their box of proof left over from her birth.
Polixenes, tailing the fugitives, is reconciled to both Leontes and Florizel. The end is in sight. Paulina invites everyone to her house to look at a statue of Hermione. This statue is so lifelike that Leontes moves to kiss it, but is warned back by Paulina, who then offers to make the statue step down.
The end of the play, without explanation or warning or psychological interpretation, throws all the characters forward into a new life. What they will make of it is left to “the gap of time.”