The Winter’s Tale Quotes

Shakespeare injects a whole lot of irony into the play when Camillo and Archidamus predict that nothing could ever come between Leontes and Polixenes, who have been best buds since childhood. We know that Leontes's jealousy will break up the friendship (as well as Leontes's family).

Out of nowhere, Leontes turns CRAZY jealous at the sight of Polixenes and the pregnant Hermione chatting it up and touching hands. (If you’ve read Romeo and Juliet, you know that hands and fingertips are considered to be erotic appendages, which is why Romeo gets all excited about pressing his palms against Juliet’s.) Although there’s been some suggestion that Leontes and Polixenes are a bit competitive (check out “Friendship” for more on this), we don’t really see this coming, especially given that Hermione is merely entertaining her husband’s childhood friend and Polixenes is being nice to his pal’s wife. Still, Leontes interprets their behavior as that of two secret lovers. When Leontes turns to his young son and says “Mamillius, Art thou my boy?”, we know that Leontes is questioning whether or not he’s the biological father of Mamillius and his unborn child.

We also notice that the quality of Leontes’s speech is affected by his jealousy. Notice all the pauses (marked by commas) in the middle of his lines? This gives his speech a choppy, erratic affect that mirrors his distraught emotional state. Leontes is so worked up about the imaginary affair between his wife and BFF that his speech breaks up and lacks the kind of fluidity that we’ve come to expect from the formerly eloquent king.

Now that Leontes suspects Hermione of sleeping with Polixenes, Leontes’s continues to wonder if Mamillius is in fact his son, despite the fact that Mamillius looks just like a “copy” of his dad. This is a pretty strange moment – as Leontes horses around with Mamillius, he keeps one eye on his wife and friend and speaks in veiled terms about being cuckolded (cheated on). For instance, Leontes puns on the word “neat,” which means “clean” (he tells Mamillius they need to be tidy) and also “cattle with horns” (Leontes’s name for Mamillius is “calf”). This is all tinged with sexual meaning. Horns, as we know, are associated with cuckolds, which is exactly what Leontes believes he is.