SOURCE: Trienens, Roger J. “The Inception of Leontes' Jealousy in The Winter's Tale.” Shakespeare Quarterly 4, no. 3 (July 1953): 321-26.

[In the following essay, Trienens focuses on the inception of Leontes's jealousy and contends that the character is beset with feelings of distrust from the very beginning of the play.]

Much of the criticism of The Winter's Tale hinges upon the characterization of Leontes and upon his startling outburst of jealousy in Act I, scene ii. Most critics have assumed that Leontes is in a normal state of mind when this scene begins but that he suddenly becomes jealous when Hermione persuades Polixenes, the visiting king, to remain longer in Sicily. Yet this has seemed a very inadequate cause for suspicion, because Hermione, however graciously, merely obeys her husband's command. Therefore these critics have generally tried to account for his sudden jealousy in one of two ways. Either they have explained it as manifesting a weakness inherent in Leontes' nature, a weakness which makes him respond to a most trifling cause for suspicion, or else they have simply called it an improbability and hence a flaw in the dramatic construction.¹

Each of these views has certain drawbacks which I should like to point out before citing what I consider to be a true interpretation. Harold C. Goddard, in The Meaning of Shakespeare, illustrates the view that Leontes' jealousy is an inherent characteristic; for he attributes it to “emotional instability.” He believes that Leontes

becomes instantaneously the victim of an insane jealousy for no other reason than the trifle that his friend from boyhood … agrees to stay at the solicitation of Leontes' wife. Within a matter of minutes, we might almost say of seconds, he is so beside himself that he is actually questioning the paternity of his own boy and his mind has become a chaos of incoherence and sensuality. Unmotivated, his reaction has been pronounced by critic after critic, and so it is, if by motive we mean a definite rational incitement to action. But there are irrational as well as rational incitements to action, and what we have here is a sudden inundation of the conscious by the unconscious, of which the agreement of Polixeness to prolong his visit is the occasion rather than the cause.²

The psychology of the unconscious here seems to mitigate the moral indictment which early critics like Coleridge frequently level against Leontes. In comparing Othello with The Winter's Tale, Coleridge describes Othello as a noble person who is not easily jealous, whereas he describes Leontes as an ignoble person who suffers from such faults as “grossness of conception” and “selfish vindictiveness” and who is therefore easily given to jealousy.³ Lady Martin expresses the same view when she writes, “Shakespeare has therefore dealt with Leontes as a man in whom the passion of jealousy is inherent; and shows it breaking out suddenly with a force that is deaf to reason, and which stimulated by an imagination tainted to the core, finds evidences in actions the most innocent. How different is such a nature's from Othello's! …”⁴

For Leontes to be considered naturally jealous, as these critics imagine, certain obstacles would appear insurmountable. Leontes has been married for several years before manifesting jealousy and he has been tolerating the company of Polixenes for nine months. Surely if he were naturally jealous he would have betrayed his weakness in some manner before. Yet the opening scene, the discussion between Archidamus and Camillo, is clearly designed to put the audience in the same frame of mind as the characters in the play, who are astonished when such a man as Leontes turned out to be jealous. Shakespeare treats Leontes sympathetically, as in the talk with Mamillius, and he treats him as a noble rather than as a base character. It is true that Leontes succumbs to jealousy without the assistance of an Iago or an Iachimo; but at the close of the play, having suffered a purgatory of grief, he appears worthy of the reconciliation with Hermione.

Thus the alternate view that Leontes' sudden jealousy is simply an improbability would seem preferable. Hudson expresses this view, saying, “In the delineation of Leontes there is an abruptness of change which strikes us, at first view, as not a little a-clash with nature; we cannot well see how one state of mind grows out of another; his jealousy shoots comet-like, as something unprovided for in the general ordering of his character.”⁵ In his introduction to the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition Quiller-Couch further emphasizes the artistic ineptitude: “In Pandosto (we shall use Shakespeare's names) Leontes' jealousy is made slow and by increase plausible. Shakespeare weakens the plausibility of it as well by ennobling Hermione—after his way with good women—as by huddling up jealousy in its motion so densely that it merely strikes us as frantic and—which is worse in drama—a piece of impossible improbability. This has always and rightly offended the critics. …”⁶

This interpretation is reasonable, at least, since it does not contradict the most obvious facts of Leontes' characterization; yet one would naturally wish to discredit it, since it is damaging to the artistry of the play. It may seem the better of the two customary views. But fortunately both of these views may be shown to be incorrect because they are both based on a mistaken assumption; on the assumption, namely, that Leontes' jealousy rises almost instantaneously. One critic, John Dover Wilson, has contradicted this assumption in a brief note to the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition:

… The problem of this scene is to determine at what point Leontes first becomes jealous. My own belief is that the actor who plays him should display signs of jealousy from the very onset and make it clear, as he easily may, that the business of asking Polixenes to stay longer is merely the device of jealousy seeking proof.⁷

It is my hope in the present article to support Wilson's belief with arguments that will convince the reader of its validity.

The other critics would have us believe that Leontes is not beset with jealousy when scene ii begins and that his passion must therefore rise in the brief period between line 1 and line 108 when he expresses his feelings in an aside. Moreover some critics shorten the period still further. According to Coleridge, for example, the words “At my request he would not” (line 87) reveal the commencement of Leontes' jealous fit. Coleridge believes that even in lines 43-45,

                                                  yet, good deed, Leontes,
I love thee not a jar o' th' clock behind
What lady she her lord,

Hermione sets Leontes' allegedly inherent jealousy “in nascent action.” These lines, says Coleridge, should be accompanied, “as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.”⁸ But only Wilson has forthrightly asserted that Leontes is already experiencing jealousy at the very beginning of the scene. Now in the source of The Winter's Tale, Greene's Pandosto, the jealousy of the king is quite plausible. For in the narrative form of the story it seems natural that over a period of time he should become increasingly suspicious while he observes his queen and the visiting king enjoying each other's company. Quiller-Couch, in the passage we have read, states that in the process of dramatizing it Shakespeare rendered the story improbable.⁹ Yet it is also possible to assume that at the beginning of scene ii the action of the play is identical with that of the novel. If we can impose the novel on the play—that is, if we can read the opening of the scene as if Leontes were already jealous—then we should be able to relieve our minds of the charge that the plot is at this point faulty.

As a matter of fact, a textual analysis of the scene will confirm such a reading. Let us assume that Leontes has watched with increasing anxiety the familiarity that has grown up between Hermione and Polixenes during the latter's long visit. Why then would Leontes wish to detain Polixenes? Probably not in order to exact revenge, because his suspicion has not yet developed into a conviction. It seems more plausible that like Othello he simply cannot bear to doubt and that he is intent upon ascertaining the truth, which he could not easily do if Polixenes were to depart. In view of this situation it would be natural if in his attempt to detain Polixenes with a show of courtesy, Leontes failed to communicate himself with appropriate warmth. And indeed, his words seem remarkably terse and laconic in relation to the situation as it seems on the surface. In their total effect they give more the impression of blunt refusal than of courteous persuasion.¹⁰ Having managed to say little himself, Leontes addresses these curt words to Hermione: “Tongue-tied our Queen? Speak you.” She has noticed the inappropriateness of his speech which is apparent even in the printed text and which should be quite obvious in the stage delivery. Yet she does not suspect the anxiety which affects his speech any more than, up to this point, does the audience. Nor can she suspect how her success in persuading Polixenes will unsettle his mind; but that it immediately does produce such an effect is made clear by Leontes' pointed comment, “At my request he would not.” If his mind were not already given to jealousy this swift reaction would be incredible. Therefore why should we not assume that he was already jealous? If we weigh the probabilities I think we ought to conclude that Shakespeare, although not overtly revealing his jealousy before the aside, has written this scene on the premise that Leontes is jealous at its very beginning and even for some time antecedent to it.

When Leontes expresses jealousy in his aside, he does not betray the astonishment of one who has just been surprised into a passion; but instead he speaks with a careful eye for detail as he observes the behavior of Hermione and Polixenes. He has taken the event which has just passed as evidence of guilt, and he has already turned his attention towards other evidence. In fact it is a measure of the advanced stage of his suspicion that he can think in such unemotional terms about what he sees. Instead of exclaiming, “What does this mean?” or “Can it be true?” he speaks only as if he were confirmed in his suspicion: “My heart dances, but not for joy, not joy.”

After the aside, Leontes succeeds for a while in concealing his jealousy from the other characters as before; but the audience gets a better measure of his passion from the conversation with his boy, Mamillius. What distinguishes scene ii, as it progresses, from any of Leontes' previous experiences is that the seeming confirmation of his doubts rapidly unbalances his mind. Further indication that his suspicions are not entirely new comes when Leontes finally discloses his jealousy to Camillo. For then he implies that it is based not only upon Hermione's success in persuading Polixenes, but upon that in conjunction with many previous observations:

                                                                                                    Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible
Of breaking honesty;—horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? …

(284-290)

He is accustomed to observing such appearances. Insofar as they are real (we need not accuse Hermione of serious impropriety), they certainly have not all impressed his mind within the last few minutes or even hours. And still later in the scene, when Polixenes asks Camillo how Leontes came to be jealous, Camillo does not mention the incident which merely intensified the passion. He replies,

I know not; but I am sure 'tis safer to
Avoid what's grown than question how 'tis born.

(432-433)

Wilson's theory, which he set forth in 1931, has not gained the support or even the attention that it deserves and critics like M. R. Ridley, E. M. W. Tillyard, G. B. Harrison, and Hardin Craig have continued to discuss Leontes' characterization along the lines of earlier criticism.¹¹ On the other hand, Mark Van Doren seems to follow Wilson in his discussion of the play, especially when he states that Leontes “opens his whole mind to us” in the aside. But if he accepts Wilson's interpretation he does not assert the fact, much less give reasons for doing so.¹² Thomas Marc Parrott is one critic who has struck out on a fresh path:

It may repay us to follow the action of the play and to observe Shakespeare's use of the tragi-comic technique of surprise and spectacle. It opens gaily with the portrayal of the old friendship of the two kings and with Hermione's playful pressure on Polixenes to defer his departure, but the first surprise comes swiftly with the revelation of her husband's jealousy. No auditor, unless aware that Shakespeare was dramatizing Greene's novel, could have expected this. The sudden unmotivated passion of Leontes has often been denounced by critics, but Shakespeare had no desire to write Othello over again. The jealousy of Leontes, unlike that of the Moor, is causeless, self-centered, and recognized by all others in the action as morbid self-delusion.¹³

Parrott differs from critics like Quiller-Couch because in comparing the play with its source he emphasizes the surprise element instead of the supposed improbability. However, he too regards Leontes' jealousy as a “sudden unmotivated passion.”

S. L. Bethell, in his book The Winter's Tale, A Study, has noticed Wilson's theory and attempted to refute it. His argument appears in an appendix entitled “Leontes' jealousy and his ‘secret vices,’” where he also attempts to refute Wilson's other theory that Leontes himself had sinned before the opening of the play.¹⁴ I will not enter into this second dispute except to say that I do not believe that Leontes had led a sinful life either. But surely these two ideas are not interdependent; for as I have already argued, Shakespeare treats Leontes as a worthy character and Leontes becomes jealous because of the morbid condition of mind in which his situation has placed him. Bethell's argument is principally based on Leontes' comment after Hermione and Polixenes go into the garden:

                                                                                          I am angling now,
Though you perceive me not how I give line.

(180-81)

He believes that if Shakespeare gives this conventional indication of Leontes' state of mind here, it is improbable that he should have used the “relatively naturalistic technique” at the beginning of the scene. But if we accept Parrott's idea that Shakespeare used a surprise technique, this argument loses its force because the same surprise cannot happen twice. Moreover, the striking presentation of Leontes' jealousy is characteristic of Shakespeare's genius—his plays are remarkable for their dramatic openings—and by developing the contrast between the general opinion of Leontes' happiness and his true state of mind Shakespeare reiterates one of his favorite themes, that appearances are deceiving.

The Winter's Tale is complementary with Othello in that it takes jealousy as its premise and traces its consequences for a man who avoids death, whereas the earlier play traces the inception and growth of jealousy leading up to a tragic incident. In The Winter's Tale Shakespeare is thus satisfied only to hint at the question of “how 'tis born.” After scrutinizing the text we can picture to ourselves how Leontes first became jealous. However, we should realize that Shakespeare omits this matter in order to turn our attention to the estrangement which inevitably follows; for The Winter's Tale is essentially a study of estrangement and reconciliation. If jealousy is the premise of this play it does not have to rise instantaneously. Yet if Shakespeare were to have described its development dramatically he would have had to introduce matter irrelevant to his theme—as Parrott says, he would have had to write Othello over again. And if he had immediately disclosed the secret of Leontes' jealousy to the audience he could hardly have begun the play in so surprising and effective a manner.

Notes

1. Although many critics vaguely combine these different views, we may keep them separate for the purpose of discussion. There is a convenient selection of criticisms in the New Variorum edition of The Winter's Tale, ed. Furness (Philadelphia, 1898). Several more recent criticisms will be cited below; but, with one important exception, they do not add very much to those presented in the Variorum.

2. Chicago (1951), p. 650.

3. Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare, ed. Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London, 1849), I, 252-256.

4. Variorum, p. 366.

5. Variorum, p. 367

6. The Winter's Tale, ed. A. T. Quiller-Couch and J. D. Wilson (Cambridge, Eng., 1931), pp. xvi-xvii. It is not impossible, of course, that a man should become jealous suddenly and for trivial cause. See the Neilson and Hill edition of The Complete Plays and Poems (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), p. 501: “Psychiatrists might even argue today that the case of Leontes is credible.” But Quiller-Couch is right in believing that what seems improbable is dramatically impossible.

7. P. 131. Stopford A. Brooke anticipates Wilson to a very slight extent when he says that Leontes' jealousy, “sudden in its explosion, … had long been growing, unconsciously, in his heart” (On Ten Plays of Shakespeare [London, 1925], pp. 257-258). Cf. Kate Richmond-Green, Interpretation of A Winter's Tale (New York, 1896), pp. 6-7.

8. Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare, I, 254.

9. Also see the Variorum edition, pp. 352-353; the Yale edition, ed. F. E. Pierce (New Haven, 1918), p. 128; Neilson and Hill, The Complete Plays and Poems, p. 501.

10. The starting point of Wilson's note is a reference to ll. 9-10: “Though very gracious on the surface, this remark, Leontes' first, is ominous.” Wilson gives no other justification for his theory.

11. Ridley, Shakespeare's Plays, A Commentary (London, 1937), pp. 207-210; Tillyard, Shakespeare's Last Plays (London, 1938), p. 41; Harrison (ed.), Shakespeare (New York, 1948), p. 961; Craig, An Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1948), pp. 331-332.

12. Shakespeare (New York, 1939), pp. 314-315.

13. Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949), p. 384.

14. London (1947), pp. 121-124.