Summaries and Critical Commentary

Abstract

The Winter’s Tale is about two kings who were childhood friends: Leontes, King of Sicilia, who is married to Hermione and has one son, Mamillius; and Polixenes, King of Bohemia, who is also married, and has a son, Florizel. At the beginning of the play Leontes is seized with sudden jealousy. He believes that Polixenes, who is visiting him, is having an affair with Hermione, and that the baby she is about to give birth to is not his child but Polixenes’s. Polixenes flees from Sicilia and returns to Bohemia, and Leontes imprisons Hermione. When the baby is born; a daughter called Perdita, he gives her to a servant to be abandoned in the desert. He puts Hermione on trial for betraying him, and denies the truth of Apollo’s oracle which proclaims Hermione’s innocence. His son Mamillius dies of grief, and so, apparently, does Hermione. Leontes realises his jealousy was unfounded and repents for sixteen years. Meanwhile, his daughter Perdita has been found, and is brought up as a shepherd’s daughter in Bohemia. Polixenes’s son Florizel meets her and they fall in love. Polixenes tries to separate the couple but they run away together to Sicilia. Polixenes pursues them there, where Perdita’s true origins are discovered. A faithful servant who has been caring for Leontes takes the reconciled kings and their children to see a ‘statue’ of Hermione she has commissioned.