"The office becomes a woman best". Alchemy, Women, and Healing in The Winter's Tale

The purpose of this study is to discuss the role of women in one of Shakespeare's last plays, The Winter's Tale, in the light of the alchemical and medical context of early modern England. Recent criticism has rescued from oblivion the significant position of women in the healthcare system of Elizabethan and Jacobean London, demonstrating that female practitioners were highly respected in their communities as caregivers, nurses, housewives, and also alchemists. Alchemy, in particular, was one of the areas in which women were most actively involved and renowned figures like Queen Elizabeth and Mary Sidney Herbert engaged in alchemical studies. Moreover, the art of alchemy itself is usually portrayed as a lady in contemporary treatises. By considering the analogies between alchemical and dramatic art and their association with the female dimension, this essay aims at shedding further light on the characters of Queen Hermione, her daughter Perdita, and Lady Paulina in The Winter's Tale. If Hermione, whose name recalls the legendary Hermes Trismegistus, stands for the feminine aspect of matter that has to be reconciled with its male counterpart, then it can be assumed that King Leontes is the rex chymicus, who is the protagonist of several alchemical allegories and symbolises the raw matter that has to be transmuted into gold. It follows that Princess Perdita can be read as the philosophical child, the fruit of the chemical wedding between the royal couple. Finally, in the alchemical performance of the romance, Paulina functions as a personification of the art of alchemy and, as a dramatist, directs the events. She is driven throughout the play by the intention of reuniting the king and queen, Leontes and Hermione, and, in an obliquely alchemical way, employs her magical art to mend nature, thus actualising the healing effects of both alchemy and drama.