“I take thy hand, this hand,
As soft as dove's down and as white as it,
Or Ethiopian's tooth”.
Here, Florizel is speaking to Perdita, expressing his love for her by describing her hand to be as soft as “dove’s down” and as white as “Ethiopian’s tooth”. In the era of Shakespeare it was traditional for a man to pronounce his love through concentrating on a woman’s physical appearance: comparing her features to beautiful often naturalistic things, as in this case the softness of a dove’s down. The connotation of the colour white, which is being used by Florizel in these comparisons, is of innocence and purity. This emphasises the sense of innocence and honesty the audience believes to exist in Florizel and Perdita’s relationship. We believe this love to be true as Florizel and Perdita are both young and so we assume they are innocent. Such a youthful and naive love couldn’t be tainted or false in the eyes of the audience. On the other hand we have Polixenes who speaks about Perdita as if she were as common as a farm animal. He perceives Perdita as a witch who has cast her spell upon his son. He refers to her as a piece of “enchantment” and ends by saying if she is to hoop his body more with thy embraces, I will devise a death as cruel for thee As thou art tender to't. This shows Polixenes’ utter hate and rage at this moment in the play.
Another kind of love present in the play is the love between Hermione and Leontes which is also perceived by the audience, at first, to be true love:
“Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death,
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand
And clap thyself my love: then didst thou utter 'I am yours for ever.'”.
Hermione made Leontes wait three months before she agreed to marry him, showing commitment to each other as Leontes was willing to wait for her and so we assume the love to be true and genuine. But very soon the audience realises that Leontes actually has suspicions of Hemione being unfaithful to him with his childhood friend. This now soured love is illustrated by Leontes use of derogatory language in his rage; referring to Hermione as a “hobby-horse” and that “his pond fish'd by his next neighbour”. Here Leontes is using his imaginary images to convince himself.
Leontes’ decline which begins shortly after he sees his wife and best friend “paddling palms and pinching fingers” is the major transitional point in the play and is indicated by the structural break down of his speech. His sentences become shorter as his anger intensifies and he uses animalistic terms; he calls his once beloved wife a “hobby horse”. The fact that Leontes can change from declaring his love for his wife to using such a derogatory term for her indicates his unstable character and we can expect him to carry on doing so through out the play. The decline of language and speech pattern reflects his declining state of mind in this part of the play.
Leontes’ supremacy and his anger are promising to the audience, as they speculate that more drama is a foot. The contemporary audience would have been inclined to believe that Leontes’ descent into madness was a result of some punishment from the gods; with love this strong and intense it was not unusual that the relationship could be exposed to betrayal and loss. The sudden onset of madness would be unfortunate, but all too common and adds to the mystery for the audience. However, a modern audience would need to find some plausible explanation: Hermione is in the late stages of her pregnancy, Leontes is probably suffering from lack of intimacy which might have lead to sexual frustration and adds to the feeling of neglect he is experiencing. Leontes doesn’t feel secure in his relationships with his wife and best friend, Polixenes and so he begins to believe that Hermione and Polixnes are having an affair. When Hermione manages to persuade Polixenes herself, Leontes’ pride is hurt and this adds to his suspicions which spark his rage and descent into madness.
The reason for the reflection in character between Leontes and Polixenes lies in the childhood friendship between the two kings which leads me to consider the state of mind of the two kings; reflected in their use of language and the break down of their speech pattern. As the breakdown of their language progresses their mental state declines also. In Act 1 scene 2, Leontes’ decline and break down in language begins. It is also here where the mental state of Leontes begins to decline. This is shown in his erratic thinking, as he believes the notion that his best friend and his beloved wife are having an affair. This break down is shown through the use of internal punctuation, which breaks up the sentences and the language:
Go play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too – but so disgraced a part, Whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave.
Polixenes’ state of mind is also reflected by his use of language. His mental state begins to decline when Florizel angers him by saying he is not going to tell his father about his engagment to Perdita. This happens when Polixenes is in disguise, and so Florizel doesn’t realise he is actually talking to his father. Polixenes’ language begins to break down; his speech pattern being fragmented by interfering punctuation, the stumbling speech pattern suggests Polixines is losing control of his emotions.
“To be acknowledged: thou a sceptre's heir,
That thus affect'st a sheep-hook!”
This brings me to my next point; both kings attack close members of family. Polixenes attacking Florizel is a reflection of how Leontes attacks Mamillius by questioning him on whether he is actually his son or not. “My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius, Art thou my boy?” Another point of recognition is that both kings also make attacks on women. Polixenes attacks Perdita in Act 4 scene 4 when he refers to her as a “sheep hook”you have used this twice before . An attack like this one on a woman by a sovereign shocks the audience. This attack is also a result of deception as the king is being deceived by Florizel, but in turn Polizenes is deceiving Florizel by being disguised. In the same way Leontes attacks Hermione. He has her put in prison whist she is still pregnant with his unborn child although he believes differently at the time. This in turn leads to the “death” of Hermione and the actual death of his son, who dies from heartache. This attack leads to even more deception as Hermione deceives Leontes by pretending that she is dead.
The next deception follows; the actions of Leontes lead to the deception by Camillo. Leontes asks Camillo to kill Polixenes by poisoning him:
“How I am galled,--mightst bespice a cup
To give mine enemy a lasting wink;
Which draught to me were cordial.”
Camillo agrees only if Leontes will promise that everything will go back to normal afterwards. Camillo is lying as he then goes and tells Polixenes and leaves for Bohemia with Polixenes. Leontes believes he must destroy Hermione to regain peace of mind.
When we go to Bohemia we meet again those positive qualities; love hospitality, friendship which were present in Sicilia, but were destroyed by Leontes. Similarly Polixines destroys these qualities in Bohemia.
Paulina is also the advisor of Leontes. She protests Hermione’s innocence attempting to persuade Leontes to change his mind about imprisoning. Paulina shows controlled use of language compared to Leontes showing her state of mind compared to his. She is organised level headed and strong willed where as at this moment in the play Leontes is out of control and is losing his mind. Shakespeare shows the state of mind of these two characters through the control or lack of control in their language. Paulina also helps Hermione keep her fake death. She takes control of Leontes’ actions when Hermione dies. This brings about the happy ever after ending to the play where Florizel and Perdita get married and Leontes finds out his wife is not dead and is reunited his lost daughter, Perdita.
And so we return to the beginning of the play, controlled by talk of friendship and love; we heard how the Mamillius could “make old hearts fresh” bringing a promising and light hearted tone to the beginning of the play. Like wise we return to this for in the end, everything is happy and the future is promising and Leontes has changed for the good after years of resentment about his actions.
Leontes and Polixines represent that even great and noble men can be weak, their weakness becomes evident through their own lack of judgement. Leontes at the beginning of the play is arrogant, paranoid, rash and jealous. Hermione cleverly teaches him a lesson by pretending to be dead for sixteen years. By the end of those sixteen years, when Hermione reveals herself, Leontes has indeed learnt his lesson, reinforcing Shakespeare’s idea that retribution must be earned. Leontes also had to suffer sixteen years of looking for his lost daughter, who he had ordered to be taken away when he believed the child wasn’t his. Another factor to be remembered is that there were no other characters to affect the two kings’ decisions – only they are to blame.
Polixenes also learns a lesson within the play. He loses his temper when he goes in disguise to the sheep shearing festival and discovers that Florizel plans to marry Perdita who at the time was thought to be the son of a shepherd. Polixenes believes that she isn’t good enough for his son based on her class and heritage alone. Little does Polixenes know that she is in fact the daughter of Leontes. Polixenes learns at the end of the play that deception and pompousness leads to bad consequences and that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
Over all Shakespeare tries to convey the message that power isn’t everything and asserting your superiority doesn’t always get you what you want. When Leontes finally realises the error of his ways the madness will disappear as quickly as it had seized him.
Shakespeare’s plays are concerned with the audience’s responses to and interpretations of them. This I believe is what makes them plays that can be enjoyed and studied by anyone from any time period - interpret them in their own way which can be very different: as we see in the case of the Elizabethan and modern day interpretations of Leontes’ descent into madness.
