As a biology major who sometimes really wishes she could be an English major, a Shakespeare course is a rare treat. I registered for Shakespeare Now and Then: Versions of The Winter's Tale not knowing quite what to expect, as its premise is to explore versions of one of Shakespeare’s late plays, "The Winter’s Tale," which I had heard of maybe once before and definitely not read. Other readings have included "Persuasion," "Daniel Deronda," "King Lear," Pandosto’s "A Triumph of Time" and "All’s Well That Ends Well." I’m thinking a lot about this class at the moment because I have an essay due in a week, and rather than write that, I’m writing about writing it. I know, I’m pretty meta that way.
Many of the plays and novels we read are products of a later period in the author’s working life, and their maturity in both style and theme tends to be obvious. Consider "Persuasion," a short but deeply subtle tale focused on a mature heroine confronting and reconciling a past mistake, in which meaning comes most strongly through silence, compared with "Pride and Prejudice," a jubilant romance brimming with sensory stimulation, which relies on conversation and passionate words to drive the plot forward to resolution.
Each time we read a new work in this class, I struggle to determine how it could possibly be construed as a "version" of "The Winter’s Tale," but common themes come out of the woodwork with time. Each story is a tale of winter in its own way, signified by changes brought on by long passages of time and periods of stagnation, broken by some glimmer of warmth or hope.
Why is a theme like winter, so bleak and dead, such a pervasive commonality in late work? Winter weighs heavily on people; it drives them indoors and blankets everything in cold and monochrome. (I don’t like the cold. Can you tell? I’m sorry, New England roots.) Winter is neither cheerful nor especially hopeful, but something to be gotten through. Here, then, is the sticking-point—there’s always something better on the other side: spring.
In these stories, lengthy periods of time yield transformations for the better. This is not to say that the whims of youth and spontaneity always come to naught, but rather that it is the passage of time that allows these things to come to fruition, and that they fuel the survival of a long freeze. Whether the “winter” in the story lasts for a few months, eight and a half years, or 16, the blooming promise of renewed life and hope comes with the denouement.
By no means am I in the winter of my life, but I am certainly in the winter of my Duke career. If freshman year is summer, when everything is golden and full of opportunity, and sophomore year is autumn, when things are beginning to seem more serious and winter ought to be thought of, prepared for, but colorful leaves and blue skies still dazzle—junior year is certainly winter. Night after night of endless work, days a cycle of library-class-library-internship applications-library with no clear line between sleep and wakefulness, it has begun to seem as endless as the season itself. I’ve never seen my classmates as stressed as they all are now, caught in the rip-tide of a collective quarter-life crisis and perpetually on the verge of a full-on meltdown.
I am consistently frustrated by my own inability to look past this stage of my college career. When I should be thanking my lucky stars that I have a full year left at Duke (sorry, seniors) and enjoying every day of it, what I mostly have running through my head is a list of everything I have to check off for the day and how, impossibly, I can fit it all in. Every day I wonder if I’m doing the right major, if the career I’m aiming for will make me happy in the end, and why I feel so behind every other person in this school of hyper-achievers—and how to catch up.
What I’m gaining from the tales I’m reading for this class is the reminder that this semester is preparation for the start of my adult life, not its zenith. Focus and wherewithal now will only benefit me in the future, and that’s comforting. The snow will melt, leaf buds and daffodils will make their brave way through as they do every year and something—who knows what—will come of all this work.
It’s more exciting than frightening not to know what that will mean or when it’ll come. This is a shared human experience, not only among my fellow classmates but, clearly, one that has transcended centuries of little individual lives.
Winter is a blessing. Without it, spring and summer wouldn’t feel as magnificently freeing and gorgeously alive, and autumn would lose its poetic charm. Everything pauses and sleeps, and a chance appears to reflect, mature and appreciate what has passed and to look eagerly to the future.
So, instead of grumbling at freezing mornings, I will cherish the feeling of clutching a piping hot coffee and speed-walking to class with the knowledge that a cozy coffee shop or random warm day is somewhere right around the corner.Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.