Polixenes, King of Bohemia, is anxious to return home now he has been on a visit to his childhood friend King Leontes in Sicily for nearly nine months. Leontes begs his friend to delay his departure and is denied. When his pregnant queen, Hermione, succeeds in persuading Polixenes to stay, Leontes conceives an obsession that his wife has been unfaithful with his friend. Leontes asks his cupbearer, Camillo, to poison Polixenes, but rather than do so Camilla warns Polixenes and they flee leaving Hermione and her beloved son, Mamillius, to face the King's wrath.

Hermione is imprisoned with no evidence against her other than Leontes' suspicions, and she delivers her baby girl, who is taken to court by the lady Paulina to try to persuade Leontes to accept the child. Instead Paulina's husband, Antigonus, is compelled to take the baby into exile. Weak from her childbearing Hermione is brought to trial where she is vindicated by a message from the Delphic oracle to which Leontes had appealed. News comes that Mamillius is dead from distress at his mother's arrest and Hermione appears to die as the news shocks Leontes back to reality and remorse.

Antigonus, directed by a dream, leaves the baby on a beach in Bohemia but he is killed by a bear before he can leave. A shepherd and his son find the child and take her home.

Time, as a chorus, tells that sixteen years pass by as Leontes mourns the loss of his wife and children. In Bohemia Polixenes' son, Florizel, has met and fallen in love with a shepherd's daughter, Perdita, who presides over a sheepshearing feast. Polixenes and Camillo, in disguise, attend the feast where they are entertained by dancers and by the rogue Autolycus, who has previously tricked the Young Shepherd and stolen his purse to provide himself with knick-knacks to sell at the feast. Polixenes unmasks, denounces Florizel and threatens the shepherd and his son for allowing Perdita to befriend the Prince.

With the aid of Camillo and Autolycus, Florizel and Perdita escape and travel to Sicily. They are followed by the shepherds, who in turn are pursued by Polixenes and Camillo. At Leontes' court Florizel introduces his beloved, then, as Polixenes arrives, the revelations of the shepherds prove Perdita to be the long-lost banished daughter of Leontes. The joyful courtiers go with Paulina to see a newly completed statue of Hermione and as music sounds the 'statue' moves. Hermione has lived in seclusion believing that her daughter will be found and the play ends as Florizel and Perdita are betrothed, Leontes is restored to his queen and, as a reward for her care, Paulina is given Camillo to be her new husband.

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's great romance plays written about 1610. It was performed at the Globe Theatre and at court in 1611, and first published in 1623.

© Marian J. Pringle
Special Collections Librarian