Timeline and Summary
MoreTimeline and Summary
- 1.2: Leontes asks Polixenes to stay a while longer in Sicily but Polixenes refuses. After Hermione succeeds in convincing Polixenes to hang out, Leontes turns insanely jealous and convinces himself that Hermione and Polixenes are sleeping together.
- 1.2: Leontes orders a reluctant Camillo to poison Polixenes and promises he won’t hurt his wife.
- 2.1: Leontes finds out that Polixenes and Camillo have run away to Bohemia, so he snatches Mamillius away from Hermione, calls his wife an adulteress, and has her thrown in prison.
- 2.3: Leontes is confronted by Paulina, who shows him that the newborn baby is in fact his.
- 2.3: Leontes orders Antigonus to abandon the “little bastard” in the Bohemian “desert.”
- 3.2: Leontes tries his wife for adultery and treason, despite news from Apollo’s oracle that Hermione is innocent and the newborn baby is his.
- 3.2: When Leontes learns that Mamillius has died (off-stage), he repents.
- 5.1: Fast forward sixteen years. (Leontes has been repenting and punishing himself for his bad behavior all this time.)
- 5.1: Leontes learns that Florizel has arrived and is excited to see his old friend’s son. Then he learns that Polixenes has arrived in Sicily to punish Florizel for running away.
- 5.2: We hear second-hand that Perdita’s true identity has been discovered and that she’s been reunited with Leontes.
- 5.3: At Paulina’s house, Leontes sees a “lifelike” statue of Hermione and discovers that the statue is actually a very much alive Hermione. Hooray! Leontes and Hermione can be together again.