The Book:
The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Written between 1609-1611
The Talk:
In the final scene of The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare, Paulina unveils a statue of the long-dead queen Hermione, made by an “Italian master,” that has been painted to look as life-like as possible.
King Leontes, who killed her with his jealous rage, is overcome by the likeness and wishes to kiss it. Paulina stops him:
Good my lord, forbear.
The ruddiness upon her lip is wet.
Once Leontes is in full swoon, Paulina cryptically offers something even more real. Leontes begs for it, and Paulina claims what she’s about to do is not magic. At her command and the sound of music, the statue comes to life.
Leontes, touching Hermione, cries:
O, she’s warm!
If this be magic, let it be an art
Lawful as eating.
Then Paulina gives a speech, and the play quickly comes to a close.
The surface level reading of this scene is that a miracle has occurred, somehow, and that Queen Hermione has come back to life. Why or how this happens is never really explained. It’s a happy ending that fudges the rules, and that’s all you really need to know.
But after I read the play, a question continued to nagged me: What if the statue isn’t the queen? What if it’s just a copy, an automaton, a robot, or a kind of changeling? What does that mean for the story?
An untrustworthy ending
Even though Shakespeare had no idea of a robot, he leaves enough in the play itself to problematize the ending:
King Leontes is highly suggestable. Early in the play, once he gets it in his head that his wife is unfaithful to him, it rules his every thought, and he destroys his family against all advice. But even after he repents, which he does due to a thunderstorm, he is a highly suggestable character in every following scene, easily given over by the slightest hint of something being true.
In the final statue scene, the King’s reaction is foregrounded. The other characters do react, but the transformation is narrated to the audience, interpreted to us, through the King’s unreliable imagination. We see this event mostly through his eyes.
Paulina had no hint of magical powers or knowledge prior to this event. She says she’s going to make the statue do something, unassisted by “wicked powers.” Her agency rules out an act by Apollo. And Apollo is the only “good” spiritual force in the play. When Leontes says “If this be magic..” Paulina says nothing. The reader is left only with an “If,” though Paulina seems to rule magic out.
So what are we left with? An unreliable, impressionable king who really believes strongly that this statue, created by an artisan, is his wife. And the owner/controller of said statute who operates and commands it, claims it is not operating by magic. But it makes no difference to the king how or why this works, he only loves the impression, the illusion of his long-dead wife, by whatever “art.”
It’s an almost literal deus ex machina. Deus ex machina typically refers to a kind of unearned salvation in a story, when some miracle or curveball happens that resolves everything in an instant. This scene is of course that, but it’s also a soul-in-a-statue, perhaps even a machine itself.
Technology as magic
In Shakespeare’s time, knowledge, science, magic, technology, art, and craft, were all blended together and intertwined. (See The Tempest, where Prospero is a scholar-magician-scientist.) Artisans are creators of tools, users of tools, and producers of things. Magic is an “art,” in the same way sculpture is an “art,” in the same way any practical knowledge is. Leontes doesn’t know how the transformation worked, only that it must be an “art” of some kind. In the same way, few people today can explain how computers work, only what they output. We stand in wonder and awe of technology, much the same way as the king does.
And so we are left with this troubling ending, in which technology (i.e. magical technique that is hidden from us) saves the day but provides unsatisfying solace.
The ending of The Winter’s Tale is troubling in two ways:
First, Leontes’ embrace of simulation as redemption. This is the most obvious problem. The spirit of Leontes is alive and well in men who have pillows or life-like dolls as girlfriends or who have “virtual” AI girlfriends online.
You’re the real thing
Even better than the real thing
Leontes is the “early adopter”—ready to spring and embrace magic he’s only just heard about. Leontes would be all-in on crypto, for sure. His embrace of whatever Hermione is (does he even care?) is a redemption for him, but it is unlikely to satisfy us.
Second, Paulina’s use of technology as redemption. Maybe the statue is a simulation of the queen, maybe not. But we are still left with Paulina’s motivations. In an earlier scene she makes the king promise he won’t marry until she gives him permission. Does she know what the statue can do? Is this all part of her plan? Is she the equivalent of Prospero, pulling all the strings behind the scenes? If so, why should we trust her? Why should we trust that the statue is the true queen?
We could imagine a sequel to the play in which the robot-queen returns to the palace and functions as a puppet for Paulina, in which the family is restored and happy but unaware that Paulina is truly in charge. Is this satisfying as a happy ending? Moreover, is this satisfying as a redemption story?
Technology saves—if you can believe it
The dissatisfaction at the end of The Winter’s Tale is not merely a literary curiosity. We, too, live in a deus ex machina tale, in which technology (that we don’t understand) promises to save us. It promises not just practical tools, but to solve moral problems, to make us better people, to make things right.
But the evidence of this is at best mixed. Tech boosters promote a near-term utopia. But when pressed with technology’s failures, they claim technology is “neutral.” It’s just a tool that can be used for good or ill. But if technology is what we make of it, not by its nature good, then what hope do we have of it making us better, since its ultimate goodness or badness remains dependent on us?
And so the salvation that technology holds out, if not wholly persuasive now, is always eventual, the last scene of the final act. The struggle between good and evil, which it has never really won, will be completed very, very soon.
But will it be salvation or just the simulation of one? Tellingly, Paulina commands her audience before she does the trick:
It is required
You do awake your faith. Then, all stand still.
Or those who think it is unlawful business
I am about, let them depart.
But it is not just faith in the art that we must embrace, but faith in the owner or controller of that art. Faith in technology is faith in the one who controls it.
As Hamlet says in a different play, “Ay, there’s the rub.” Those who devoutly wish for technological salvation also tacitly believe in the virtue of the technocrats—or, at minimum, they don’t expect they themselves will be harmed by them (a kind of cheerleading as moral hazard).
It seems to me that there’s no contradiction between enjoying the mixed benefits of technology while remaining skeptical of the idea that smarter people are better people, that the technological elite are different than other humans, or that moral improvement follows from technological improvement (the Star Trek fallacy).
Let’s call it “Leontes With Questions.” Thanks for the gift, but is this true? Is this real? Is this good? How does this work? What am I giving up? Who’s in control? Who benefits? What are their motives? Why should I trust them? Are they human just like me?