The Winter’s Tale

Leontes is suddenly, baselessly jealous of his wife Hermione and his friend Polixenes. A child is abandoned, a son dies, a statue stands still for sixteen years. Then, impossibly, the play becomes a pastoral and a resurrection.

Why it is set. A Level romance: jealousy without Iago, time as a character, and a last scene that is either miracle or theatre (or both). Structure is the argument.

Plot

1. 1

   Sicilian winter

   Polixenes has stayed nine months. Leontes convinces himself Hermione is pregnant by his friend. Camillo is ordered to poison Polixenes; they flee. Hermione is tried while still a new mother.

2. 2

   The oracle and the deaths

   Delphi declares Hermione chaste. Leontes denies it; Mamillius dies; Hermione falls and is reported dead. Paulina becomes the voice of accusation.

3. 3

   The abandoned child

   Baby Perdita is left on the Bohemian coast. Antigonus exits, pursued by a bear. A shepherd finds the child. Time enters and skips sixteen years.

4. 4

   Bohemian summer

   Perdita, now a shepherdess, is in love with Polixenes’s son Florizel. At the sheep-shearing festival Polixenes unmasks and forbids the match. They flee to Sicilia, with Autolycus picking pockets around the plot.

5. 5

   The statue

   Identities are restored offstage. Paulina reveals a statue of Hermione that comes to life. Leontes is given a second chance the play has not, strictly, earned — which is the point of grace.

Characters

• Leontes

  King of Sicilia

  Jealousy as a self-generating language. Unlike Othello, he needs no Iago. The second half asks whether repentance can match the harm.

• Hermione / Paulina

  Queen and truth-teller

  Hermione’s trial speech is dignity under slander. Paulina keeps the wound open for sixteen years so that healing, when it comes, is not cheap.

• Perdita / Florizel / Autolycus

  The Bohemian generation

  Perdita is nature and art in one girl (the flower debate). Autolycus is comic vice, a reminder that Bohemia is not Eden.

Themes

• Jealousy and tyranny

  A king’s fantasy becomes law, trial and exposure. The play isolates the male imagination as a political danger.

• Time, grace, restoration

  Time speaks as a chorus. The sixteen-year gap is theatrical cheek and a theology: some losses do not come back (Mamillius), some do (Hermione, if we believe it).

• Nature and art

  Perdita and Polixenes argue about grafted flowers. The statue scene is art so perfect it becomes life — or life that pretended to be art.

• Death and resurrection

  Winter’s tale means an old wives’ story, something you would not credit. The ending asks an audience to credit it anyway.

Key quotations

Learn speaker, location, and what the line is doing — not the words alone.

• Too hot, too hot! / To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.

  Leontes · I.2

  Jealousy arriving without cause, in the middle of a civil sentence. Syntax breaks as the mind does.

• Exit, pursued by a bear.

  Stage direction · III.3

  The most famous SD in English drama. Tragedy collides with the impossible; genre pivots on a bear.

• A sad tale’s best for winter.

  Mamillius · II.1

  The title in a child’s mouth. He will not live to hear the spring half of his own play.

• If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating.

  Leontes · V.3

  The statue scene’s wish: let the impossible be as ordinary as bread. Faith, theatre and hunger in one plea.

Exam notes

• Structure is theme: Acts 1–3 versus 4–5, Sicilia versus Bohemia, winter versus summer.
• Name what does not come back (Mamillius, Antigonus). Restoration is partial.
• The statue: miracle, Paulina’s plot, or both? Take a view and use staging.
• Context: romance as late genre, Greene’s Pandosto as source, Jacobean tragicomedy.

Watch & read