Leontes

Play

The Winter's Tale

Summary

The King of Sicilia whose sudden, causeless jealousy — convinced with no evidence that his pregnant wife Hermione is sleeping with his best friend Polixenes — sets the play's catastrophe in motion. He causes the deaths of his son Mamillius and apparently his wife, exiles his newborn daughter, and spends sixteen years in genuine penitence before the play's astonishing final act restores what he has lost. His jealousy's inexplicability is deliberately extreme, like a psychological winter descending without warning.

Notable Quotations

"Is whispering nothing? / Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses? / Kissing with inside lip?" *(I.ii)*

"I have drunk, and seen the spider." *(II.i)*

"Stars, stars, / And all eyes else dead coals!" *(V.i)*

Cross-references

• The Winter's Tale — the play
• Romances (Late Plays)
• character_hermione — his queen, falsely accused
• character_paulina — who confronts and preserves him
• character_polixenes — the friend his jealousy targets
• character_camillo — the counselor he loses through his own tyranny
• character_perdita — the daughter he abandons and is ultimately reconciled with