The Winter's Tale--2 (spoilers)

I have finished The Winter's Tale. I think that where we left off, Antigonus had just been eaten by a bear. Shakespeare follows this awesome scene with a sixteen year gap. The next scene, a narrator, called Time, suddenly appears and announces that sixteen years have passed.
What follows next is almost a different play. We're in Bohemia, where the focus is on the abandoned daughter of Leontes (Perdita) and the son of Polixenes (Florizel). Perdita has been raised by a shepherd, but Florizel has fallen in love with her. There's also a brilliant trickster/pedlar, named Autolycus, who is going around cheating people and singing. Here's the highlight: When you dance, I wish you a wave of the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.
Look, it's great, but it really does feel almost like a different play. Shakespeare is kind of just riffing, I think. It's like he can do whatever he wants, sure, but it's still a little jarring. I wonder if it would flow more smoothly if Polixenes isn't such an ass about Florizel loving an apparent peasant. If he could hold onto the victim with integrity thing, our pathos could continue flowing smoothly, even across the sudden sixteen year gap. Instead, it's bouncing around a lot.
And then we're back in Sicilia, where Leontes has been doing penance for killing his wife with the false accusation sixteen years ago. Paulina (Hermione's friend and Antigonus' widow) follows him around, making snide comments about how he killed a goddess and all this stuff. Okay, some stuff happens. And then they all make up and go to see a statue of Hermione, but it turns out that it's really Hermione, not dead, just a little bit older. Weird, but very good. The representation, the reality, stagecraft built into the plot, it's a lot of stuff that happens earlier in Shakespeare, but here he has it so built into just what he does, it's more subtle. God, it's good.

On more pressing matters, Thursday I'm walking around the top floor of work (it's a used bookstore) when I hear from the front: "Sodomy is fun! It is fun and legal! That's why we do it! Because sodomy is so much fun! It's fun! Sodomy! It's fun!" Now, I work downtown, I mean really downtown. Crazies come in everyday. Every single day. So, this was a crazy, right? No, this was my co-worker. He is my favorite co-worker and was on the phone to this ultra-conservative Christian radio station he listens to while at work. Got on the air and spent almost an entire minute yelling about how much fun sodomy is. I'm going to avoid trying to make any forced connections between The Winter's Tale and my job.
Tomorrow it's A Midsummer's Night Dream, for two reasons. First, I think the blog needs something lots of people have read and probably liked. Second, I'm about to try to do King John, which is a bad play. So, I need to brace myself with something familiar and very very good.