‘Take up the bastard’: Acknowledgement and Exposure in The Winter’s Tale

What is it about?

A key scene in William Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale makes more sense if we are aware that the characters are acting out a ritual that Shakespeare and his contemporaries believed dated back to ancient Rome. In Act II Scene iii, Queen Hermione's lady-in-waiting Paulina brings her new-born daughter Perdita to King Leontes, lays the baby on the ground in front of him, and expects him to lift it up. Consumed with irrational jealousy and convinced that the child is not his, Leontes refuses. This echoes a tradition that midwives laid babies on the ground before their fathers, who acknowledged paternity by picking them up. If the fathers refused, Roman law supposedly allowed for the child to be abandoned, just as Leontes insists Perdita is abandoned.

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Why is it important?

The detail of the acknowledgement ritual is something that Shakespeare adds to the source-material that he used for The Winter's Tale, Pandosto by Robert Greene. People in Shakespeare's time and later have described him as an intuitive, imaginative author who had little in the way of education. Understanding that Shakespeare must have known about this ritual makes us aware that this is not true. Also, if we understand that midwives, women of low social status, traditionally carried out this ritual, we will understand more about the character of Paulina.