Perdita

Play

The Winter's Tale

Summary

The infant daughter abandoned by Leontes on the Bohemian coast, raised by an Old Shepherd, who grows into a young woman of extraordinary natural grace and beauty. As hostess of the sheep-shearing festival she distributes flowers with a formal eloquence that announces her hidden royalty even while she believes herself to be a shepherd's child. Her reunion with her father Leontes is one of the play's most moving elements, reported rather than staged.

Notable Quotations

"O Proserpina, / For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st fall / From Dis's waggon!" *(IV.iv)*

"I was not much afeard; for once or twice / I was about to speak and tell him plainly, / The selfsame sun that shines upon his court / Hides not his visage from our cottage, but / Looks on alike." *(IV.iv)*

Cross-references

• The Winter's Tale — the play
• Romances (Late Plays)
• character_leontes — her father who abandoned her
• character_hermione — her mother
• character_florizel — her devoted suitor
• character_polixenes — the king who opposes their match
• character_autolycus — the rogue who haunts the festival she presides over