Polixenes
Play
Summary
The King of Bohemia and Leontes's boyhood friend whose prolonged visit to Sicilia triggers Leontes's jealous delusion. Polixenes is entirely innocent of the adultery Leontes imagines, yet in the play's second half he reprises the tyrant's role himself — violently forbidding his son Florizel's marriage to the shepherd girl Perdita with the same unreasonableness Leontes showed. The mirroring is deliberate, showing that the impulse to control is not particular to Leontes.
Notable Quotations
"We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i' the sun, / And bleat the one at the other: what we changed / Was innocence for innocence." *(I.ii)*
Cross-references
- The Winter's Tale — the play
- Romances (Late Plays)
- character_leontes — his old friend whose jealousy he inadvertently triggers
- character_camillo — the counselor who saves and serves him
- character_florizel — his son whose marriage he forbids
- character_perdita — the shepherd girl he opposes