Winter’s Tale begins as a typical Shakespearean tragedy; there is jealousy, revenge, and sexual corruption all within the first act. Basically, Leontes and Polixenes have been friends since boyhood—when they were inseparable—and now the two kings, who have separate kingdoms, have spent the last nine months in one another’s company (with Polixenes staying with Leontes). Polixenes is supposed to get going, but Leontes’ wife, Hermione, charms him into staying. This would all be fine if their hand-touching did not throw Leontes into a jealous rage, convinced his wife and dear friend are having an affair and his own son (who looks just like him) is not even his son. Without skipping a beat, he tells Camilo, a lord, to poison Polixenes. The first act ends with Camilo telling and warning Polixenes and saying he will help him escape.

To me, it seems like the entire plot has somehow occurred within the very first act, but what my mind keeps wandering back to is: How is Leontes so quickly convinced that his childhood best friend betrayed him by sleeping with his wife? We touched on this briefly in class, but I believe it has to do with men’s distrust for women in this time period. The play thus far seems to hint at the notion that women are corruptors who ruin everything for men. Polixenes explains to Hermione:

We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun

And bleat the one at th’ other. What we changed

Was innocence for innocence. We knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed

That any did. Had we pursued that life,

And our weak spirits ne’er been higher reared

With stronger blood, we should have answered

heaven

Boldly “Not guilty,” the imposition cleared

Hereditary ours (1.2.67-74).

We see a lot of biblical references here. First, the two boys were as innocent as lambs—like Christ. Then, both Polixenes and Leontes lost their innocence when they started interacting with women. They were tempted to sin and have sex by women—like Adam convinced to taste the forbidden fruit by Eve. Thus resulting in the fall of man; Polixenes and Leontes lost the Garden of Eden to original sin and this led to them to drift from one another. Their separation is due to the evils of women.

Within the same conversation, Hermione states:

Grace to boot!

Of this make no conclusion, lest you say

Your queen and I are devils. Yet go on.

Th’ offenses we have made you do we’ll answer,

If you first sinned with us, and that with us

You did continue fault, and that you slipped not

With any but with us (1.2.80-86).

Her response is ultimately her sticking up for herself and all women by saying, “Heaven help me! You call women devils and temptresses, but you sin with us! You are not faultless!” Hermione refuses the idea that women are the reason men have problems and she refuses to let them remain blameless.

Still this is a misogynist period of time and Leontes makes sure nobody forgets it. He then says, to himself, “Or am I deceived, cuckolds ere now,… And his pond fished by his next neighbor,… While other men have gates and those gates opened…” (1.2.190-196). Leontes asserts that women are the property of men, but they violate the men who own them when they are unfaithful. Then, the embarrassed men become “cuckolds” and everyone knows about their disloyal wives who mislead them. Like Professor Mulready said about this play, “women are betrayers, men are betrayed.”

It seems within all of Shakespeare’s plays, women hold all of the blame for the errors of men. Given the time period, they are more easily targeted and less powerful. I am curious to see, as the play continues, whether Leontes still tries to kill Polixenes or if he turns on his wife too. If memory of Shakespeare’s plays serves me correct, I presume Hermione will not make it as the wife of an insanely jealous King. That being said, I loved how in this play, the wife has more of a voice. I enjoyed reading about Hermione holding her own and asserting that men are just as much a part of sin as women are.