Essay on Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale"

Welcome to my fabulous essay on A Winter's Tale, in which I exit being chased by a bear.

Disclaimer: this is not edited. However, I hope it brings up some points that you all can use to appreciate the work! Please don't copy this work (although citing is fine) because I don't want anyone to get in trouble for academic dishonesty. 

Friendship is comprised of people you consider to be your equals. As a result, there is a constant unspoken competition between friends to see who is the best, making friendship as fragile as a crisp fall leaf, browned with age. In The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare, the peculiarities of friendship are shown multiple times between Leontes and Polixenes. The cutthroat nature of countries battling to reign supreme seeps into their friendship like poison, causing the Leontes’s doubts and the ultimate decay of their friendship. This motif of the fragility of friendship is shown through the character of Leontes in particular, especially through his trust issues with all of those with whom he is closest. Shakespeare chooses to focus on the fragility of male friendship rather than female friendship in this play due to the roles of power the males hold instead of the females. One more aspect to consider is how fickle friendship can be, as shown by the one that was destroyed and restored so easily between the two kings. This motif of the breakability of friendship depends upon the fatal flaws that Shakespeare has given each of his characters. Without a doubt, Shakespeare wanted to emphasize the stress that power places on friendships, as seen with the strain in Leontes’s friendship when compared to Hermione’s.

Through the diction chosen by Shakespeare, it is clear that friendship is not just a carefree business. Because both Polixenes and Leontes are kings, their friendship seems a bit more forced and brittle than others. Shakespeare says the kings “were trained together in their childhoods,” and such wording insinuates that they did not become friends under free circumstances, but rather their friendship was originally formed to ally the two kingdoms in the future and was probably influenced by their parents (I.i.23). However, this probably would not have been apparent to them at the time, as seen when Polixenes claimed, “We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun,/ and bleat the one at th’ other” (I.ii.85-86). By using the metaphor to compare themselves to lambs, Shakespeare makes clear that the time when their friendship was strongest was when they were children, before they felt any sense of obligation to be friends as well as allies. Shakespeare wants to show that as people become older, they become more jaded and lose the sense of carefree friendship that they may have had in the past. As a result, there is more competition than friendship as friends compete to fulfill societal goals in a way superior to the other, such as earning high marks or gaining a girlfriend. Shakespeare’s diction also lends itself useful to describe the weakest points of each character, giving Leontes a jealous and harsh image while rendering Polixenes as an impulsive being.

As with most quality plays, the characters have fatal flaws to make them better rounded and more believable. Leontes’s fatal flaw in particular demonstrates how his friendship with Polixenes is flimsy. Through Leontes’s jealousy and suspicion, it becomes clear that personal flaws can damage a relationship. Leontes’s poisonous jealousy directly affects their friendship, as seen when Camillo says that he was “appointed to murder you” to Polixenes (I.ii.495). As one might expect, this did not fare well with their friendship. The fact that Leontes’s jealousy and suspicion is strong enough to eliminate an old friendship and teeter on the brink of murder is alarming. Moreover, the quick restoration of their friendship upon the exposure of Perdita’s identity makes it clear that Shakespeare wanted to illustrate the unreliability of friendship. This quick restoration, however, would not have been possible without Polixenes’s flaw of impulsiveness. Shakespeare especially focuses on the tension in male friendships, as can be seen with the contrast between the friendship between Polixenes and Leontes when compared to the ironclad friendship that Paulina and Hermoine have.

If there were such a thing as a foil for ideas rather than characters, Shakespeare would have been using it to distinguish the friendships of Leontes and Polixenes when compared to that of Hermoine and Paulina. While Polixenes and Leontes’s friendship dissolves and restores itself quickly, Hermoine and Paulina’s does not change even when Hermoine is incarcerated. “I’ll show ‘t the King and undertake to be/ Her advocate to th’ loud’st,” Paulina said, showing her unwavering faith in Hermoine (II.ii.47-48). This provides an antithesis for Polixenes and Leontes’s failing friendship. While one may argue that Hermione’s friendship with Paulina should have failed as well because Hermione was queen, her position as queen did not provide her much power, as seen when she was jailed by her husband.

Clearly, Shakespeare aimed to demonstrate the two extremes of friendships by using each character’s fatal flaw to contribute depth and complex issues to the friendships in the play as well as playing on the stresses of aging and power. Furthermore, he orchestrated this motif of friendship by using the two friendships as an antithesis. Without question, Shakespeare aimed to show the ways in which a friendship can succeed as well as fail due to the pressures of power, and he was extremely successful in demonstrating the effects of friendship on the lives of his characters.

Work Cited:

1.     Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale (1609/11). New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks (Folger Shakespeare Library), 1998. Print.