The Winter’s Tale Summary

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How It All Goes Down

The Winter’s Tale opens in a Sicilian palace, where Polixenes (the King of Bohemia) is visiting his childhood BFF, Leontes (the King of Sicily). After a nine month visit, Polixenes is ready to head back home to Bohemia, but Leontes’s devoted wife, Hermione, convinces Polixenes to stay a little bit longer. (We should point out that Leontes asks his wife to convince Polixenes to stay, and you’ll see why this is important in a moment.) As Leontes watches his wife and best bud chat it up, Leontes suddenly becomes wildly jealous and suspects that his very pregnant wife is having a torrid affair with Polixenes – Leontes is certain that Hermione is carrying the man’s love child. Leontes quickly arranges to have his old pal poisoned, but when Polixenes catches wind of Leontes’s plot to have him off’ed, Polixenes flees with a Sicilian guy named Camillo to his home in Bohemia.

Leontes is furious, so he throws his pregnant wife in the slammer, where she gives birth to a daughter (later named Perdita). Paulina, a good friend of Hermione and the only person willing to stand up to the jealous king, takes the newborn to Leontes and attempts to talk some sense into him. But, alas, King Leontes refuses to acknowledge that he is the baby’s daddy. To make matters worse, Leontes orders one of his men, Antigonus, to take the little “bastard” for a ride out to the Bohemian “desert,” where baby Perdita is left to the harsh elements. (Yeah, we know there’s no “desert” in Bohemia but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.)

Meanwhile, Leontes puts Hermione on trial for adultery and treason (despite the fact that Apollo’s Oracle announces Hermione is totally innocent and warns that the “king shall live without an heir” if Perdita, who is in the process of being disappeared, is not found. During Hermione’s trial, a servant enters with news that Prince Mammilius (the precocious young son of Hermione and Leontes) has died because he’s been so upset about the way Leontes is treating his mother. When Hermione hears the news, she falls to the ground and, soon after, we’re told she is also dead. Leontes realizes what he’s done and has a sudden change of heart – he immediately falls to his knees and begs forgiveness from the god Apollo for being such a rotten husband, father, and friend, which is nice to hear but is pretty much a day late and a dollar short.

Meanwhile, Antigonus reaches the coast of Bohemia (yeah, we know there’s no “coast” in landlocked Bohemia either, but again, we just have to go with it). Antigonus dumps off baby Perdita and…is promptly eaten by a hungry bear! (We’re not even kidding.) Luckily, an Old Shepherd happens along and finds baby Perdita, along with a bundle of riches and some documents that detail the kid’s royal heritage. (Remember this, because it’s important later.) The Old Shepherd and his country bumpkin son (the Clown) decide, what the heck, let’s keep the cash and raise the kid as our own.

A figure called “Time” appears on stage and announces that sixteen years have passed and the audience should just sit back, relax, and enjoy Big Willie Shakespeare’s show. (FYI: Flash-forwards were kind of a big no-no on the English Renaissance stage so, Shakespeare’s being kind of innovative and irreverent here. Check out “Setting” if you want to know more about this.)

At a Bohemian sheep-shearing festival (a big, spring/summer party that uses sheep haircuts as an excuse for everyone to celebrate the nice weather and for young people to hook up), we learn that Perdita has grown up to be the prettiest girl in Bohemia (which is why she gets to be Queen of the Feast) and is going steady with a gorgeous young prince named Florizel, who just so happens to be the son of King Polixenes. (Yep, that’s Leontes’s ex-best friend all right. You probably see where this is going.) There’s just one hitch – King Polixenes doesn’t know his son is dating a lowly shepherd’s daughter. (As you can see, nobody knows Perdita’s true identity – not even Perdita.) When Polixenes finds out, he tries to put the kibosh on the young couple’s engagement. Florizel, throwing caution to the wind, defies daddy’s wishes. What’s a father to do? Why, threaten to have Perdita’s face disfigured and declare he’s going to have the Old Shepherd executed, of course. (Hmm. Is it just us or, does Polixenes sound a lot like the tyrannous Leontes here?)

Florizel and Perdita run off to Sicily, where Leontes has been beating himself up for the last sixteen years (with the help of Paulina, who has seen to it that Leontes never, ever, ever forgets that he’s responsible for the deaths of Hermione and Mammilius). Polixenes and his entourage chase the couple to the Sicilian court. Before Polixenes can break up the couple and make good on his promise to scratch up Perdita’s pretty, young face, the Old Shepherd and the Clown arrive at Leontes’s court with the letters that verify Perdita’s identity. (Remember the bundle of cash and documents Antigonus left with baby Perdita before he was eaten by a bear?)

Big sigh of relief – now the royal couple can get hitched and Sicily will finally have a royal heir to take over Leontes’s reign when the old man dies. Plus, Leontes and Polixenes can be best buds again.

But wait, there’s more. Paulina invites the entire crew to her place, where she unveils a statue of Hermione. Everyone oohs and ahs over how lifelike the statue is when suddenly and miraculously the statue is…not a statue at all but a veryalive Hermione. Hurray! Leontes and Hermione reunite as husband and wife. Leontes then announces that Paulina should get hitched to Camillo (since Paulina’s late husband was eaten by a bear on account of Leontes and all).

And they all live happily ever after (except for Mammilius and Antigonus, who are still dead).

Tools of Characterization

Character Analysis

Names

In The Winter’s Tale, names tend to either serve a practical purpose (Clown, Old Shepherd, Lord, etc.) or a symbolic function.

• The name Perdita means “that which is lost,” which is fitting given that Perdita is abandoned in the desert and lost to her biological family for sixteen years.
• Florizel’s name is associated with the flowers of springtime, aligning the prince with romance and renewal, which is exactly what Florizel’s budding relationship with Perdita promises.
• Leontes’s name is suggestive of his lion-like nature – he’s aggressive, angry, and wildly jealous in the first half of the play. (Although, we should point out that Leontes turns into a pussy cat after he repents for his bad behavior.)
• Paulina’s name recalls that of Paul the Apostle (a.k.a. St. Paul). Like the influential apostle, whose epistles appear in the New Testament, Paulina becomes a spiritual guide in the latter half of the play, showing Leontes the error of his ways and leading him to the place where Hermione’s miraculous resurrection occurs.
• Mammilius’s name derives from the word “mamma,” which means “breast” in Latin. The name closely links the young boy with his mother and also the women that act as his caregivers. Leontes knows Mammilius is close to his mommy, which is why he takes Mammilius away from Hermione in order to punish his wife. When Mammilius is separated from his nurturing mother, he becomes ill and dies, just as a nursing infant would if it was taken from its mother’s breast.

Actions

Hmm. This one seems easy enough. Leontes throws his pregnant wife in jail, puts her on trial for adultery and treason, and then orders a man to abandon baby Perdita in the middle of the “desert.” Leontes’s actions make him a tyrant for much of the play, don’t you think? It’s not until after he repents (for sixteen long years) that he even resembles a human being. What about Polixenes, the guy who at first appears to be an innocent king? Well, Polixenes acts like a tyrant as well when he finds out that his son is engaged to a country bumpkin – he threatens to have Perdita’s face disfigured and says he’ll have her “father” executed. Yikes!

Age

In The Winter’s Tale the old folks (we’re talking to you, Leontes, Polixenes, and Antigonus) are responsible for all the problems in the world – the fracturing of families and friends, the deaths of loved ones, and others issues that cause suffering and heartache. The youngsters, on the other hand, are responsible for reuniting families and friends and reigniting hope for the future. Witness, for example, Florizel and Perdita, whose young love brings the families together in Sicily just before Hermione returns from the “dead.”

Leontes -  The King of Sicilia, and the childhood friend of the Bohemian King Polixenes. He is gripped by jealous fantasies, which convince him that Polixenes has been having an affair with his wife, Hermione; his jealousy leads to the destruction of his family.

Hermione -  The virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicilia. Falsely accused of infidelity by her husband, Leontes, she apparently dies of grief just after being vindicated by the Oracle of Delphi, but is restored to life at the play's close.

Perdita -  The daughter of Leontes and Hermione. Because her father believes her to be illegitimate, she is abandoned as a baby on the coast of Bohemia, and brought up by a Shepherd. Unaware of her royal lineage, she falls in love with the Bohemian Prince Florizel.

Polixenes -  The King of Bohemia, and Leontes's boyhood friend. He is falsely accused of having an affair with Leontes's wife, and barely escapes Sicilia with his life. Much later in life, he sees his only son fall in love with a lowly Shepherd's daughter—who is, in fact, a Sicilian princess.

Florizel -  Polixenes's only son and heir; he falls in love with Perdita, unaware of her royal ancestry, and defies his father by eloping with her.

Camillo -  An honest Sicilian nobleman, he refuses to follow Leontes's order to poison Polixenes, deciding instead to flee Sicily and enter the Bohemian King's service.

Paulina -  A noblewoman of Sicily, she is fierce in her defense of Hermione's virtue, and unrelenting in her condemnation of Leontes after Hermione's death. She is also the agent of the (apparently) dead Queen's resurrection.

Autolycus -  A roguish peddler, vagabond, and pickpocket; he steals the Clown's purse and does a great deal of pilfering at the Shepherd's sheepshearing, but ends by assisting in Perdita and Florizel's escape.

Shepherd -  An old and honorable sheep-tender, he finds Perdita as a baby and raises her as his own daughter.

Antigonus -  Paulina's husband, and also a loyal defender of Hermione. He is given the unfortunate task of abandoning the baby Perdita on the Bohemian coast.

Clown -  The Shepherd's buffoonish son, and Perdita's adopted brother.

Mamillius -  The young prince of Sicilia, Leontes and Hermione's son. He dies, perhaps of grief, after his father wrongly imprisons his mother.

Cleomenes -  A lord of Sicilia, sent to Delphi to ask the Oracle about Hermione's guilt.

Dion -  A Sicilian lord, he accompanies Cleomenes to Delphi.

Emilia -  One of Hermione's ladies-in-waiting.

Archidamus -  A lord of Bohemia.

THE WINTER'S TALE

William Shakespeare

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Analysis

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The Winter's Tale is a perfect tragicomedy. Set in an imaginary world where Bohemia has a seacoast, and where ancient Greek oracles coexist with Renaissance sculptors, it offers three acts of unremitting tragedy, followed by two acts of restorative comedy. In between, sixteen years pass hastily, a lapse which many critics have taken as a structural flaw, but which actually only serves to highlight the disparity of theme, setting, and action between the two halves of the play. The one is set amid gloomy winter, and illuminates the destructive power that mistaken jealousy exercises over the family of Leontes, King of Sicilia; in the second half, flower-strewn spring intervenes, and all the damage that the King's folly accomplished is undone—through coincidence, goodwill, and finally through miracle, as a statue of his dead wife comes to life and embraces him.

As the force behind the tragedy stems from Leontes's belief that his wife, Hermione, and best friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, are lovers, so Leontes has attracted more critical interest than any other character in the play. An Othello who is his own Iago, he is a perfect paranoiac, convinced that he has all the facts and ready to twist any counter-argument to fit his (mistaken) perception of the world. Perhaps because of its uncertain origin, Leontes's madness is a terrifying thing: he becomes a poet of nihilism, demanding, when told that there is "nothing" between Hermione and Polixenes, "Is this nothing? / Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing, / The covering sky's nothing, Bohemia nothing, / My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings, / If this be nothing"(I.ii.292-296). The roots of his jealousy seem to run too deep for the play to plumb—there are hints of misogyny, of dynastic insecurity, and of an inability to truly separate himself psychologically from Polixenes, but no definitive answers. Indeed, the only answer is his own—in one of Shakespeare's finer images, Leontes says "I have drunk, and seen the spider"(II.i.45).

To balance his morbid, brooding nihilism and sexual jealousy, Shakespeare makes Leontes's daughter Perdita a poet of spring, rebirth, and revitalization, whose own lover (Polixenes's son Florizel) is as constant and generous as Leontes is suspicious and cruel. She appears decked in flowers, and when she dispenses them to everyone around her, the play links her with Proserpina, Roman goddess of the spring and growing things. If Leontes is a tragic hero, then she is a fairy-tale heroine, a princess reared among commoners who falls in love with a prince and—eventually—lives happily ever after. Leontes casts her out as an infant in Act III, when he is in the grip of darkness; in Act V she returns to him, and restores him to happiness. The miracle of Hermione's resurrection at the play's close is only a fitting close to the spirit of rebirth that Perdita brings into the story.

The play is also notable for its rich group of supporting characters. Hermione is an exemplary and eloquent figure, despite the fact that she spends the play defending herself against unjust accusations, and her friend Paulina is the voice of sanity while Leontes is mad and then the voice of reminder and penance once he regrets his crimes. The rustic Shepherd who takes in Perdita and the ever-faithful lord, Camillo are both sympathetic characters, too, but none can match Autolycus, the peddler, thief and minstrel who is a harmless villain (he robs, lies, and cheats)—so harmless, in fact, that the audience forgives and even applauds him as he sings, dances, and robs his way through the play, contriving even to find time to provide a helping hand to the other characters as they struggle toward their happy ending.