Paulina

Abstract

As in other respects which concerned acting style, Ronald Eyre’s 1981 RSC production was responsible for the most controversial Paulina in the performance of Sheila Hancock. Roger Warren thoroughly approved of her interpretation: ‘Most Paulinas are effective in a fearsomely humorous way; the immediately noticeable thing about this Paulina was that she was not fearsome at all, explaining patiently to the bureaucratic gaoler that the child is prisoner to the womb and now freed by nature.’ In his view she delivered the melodramatic speech at iii ii 173–200 (see above, p. 25) ‘without a trace of rant but with maximum impact’, and at least in the later scenes she gave the impression of being ‘compassionate friend rather than tart scold’ (Shakespeare Survey 35, p. 148). Irving Wardle, however, saw her as engaging in ‘naggingly undiplomatic attacks on the tyrant Leontes’ which she kept up ‘right through to the statue scene’ (review of the Barbican production, The Times, 29 July 1982); and Gareth Lloyd Evans considered that while she captured Paulina’s ‘audacity and forthrightness’, she was a comic actress better suited to such parts as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and Mistress Quickly in Henry IV (Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, 10 July 1981).