ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that hibernation and hibernal revivification stories lie very consciously at the heart of Shakespeare's winter's tale. Rather than risking dramatic verisimilitude, instead the dying, hibernating, and reviving of Hermione can be read as an optimum expression of kinetic possibility for an age where the boundaries of truth and fiction are not necessarily more fraught than in our own but simply register differently. The chapter explores the hybrid romances characteristic scenes of death and medical revival in part constitute the plays oscillation between the generic poles of comedy and tragedy. Hermione's scene, situated in a wintry setting, serves as the departure for this chapters discussion of hysterica passios perceived likeness to states of hibernation and for a deeper analysis of what further meanings the artful statue scene would have communicated to its audiences. Paulina's challenge to Leontes to revive Hermione suggests a present familiarity with the diagnostic signs applied to hysterical cases, whether heat or breath are discernible.
