Discussion Topic
Leontes's jealousy and its impact on his downfall in The Winter's Tale
Summary:
Leontes's jealousy in The Winter's Tale triggers his downfall. His unfounded suspicion that his wife, Hermione, is unfaithful leads to destructive actions, including the imprisonment of Hermione and the abandonment of their daughter. This irrational jealousy alienates his loved ones and brings about immense personal loss, illustrating the tragic consequences of his baseless envy.
How did jealousy destroy Leontes in The Winter's Tale?
Does Leontes become jealous? Yes. Does it "destroy" him? All things considered, since he is reunited with both his wife and daughter at the end of the play, he is not truly destroyed.
By the end of Act III, it would appear that he is destroyed. In Act III, scene 2, Pauline confronts the jealous tyrant and enumerates all that he has done in his unfounded jealous anger.
In his jealousy, he betrayed his best friend, Polixenes. She tells him that to send away his baby daughter to be left alone in the wild was an evil action. She also lays the death of the young prince at Leontes's feet. Finally she tells him that he is responsible for the death of Hermione.
In rejecting the Oracle's answer, Leontes brings down the wrath of the gods and until what is lost is found (Perdita) Leontes will remain a broken man.
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In rejecting the Oracle's answer, Leontes brings down the wrath of the gods and until what is lost is found (Perdita) Leontes will remain a broken man.
For what it is worth, when Patrick Stewart played the role, he asked a psychiatrist friend to help him understand Leontes who appears to become jealous out of the blues, so to speak. What his friend discovered was that the jealousy we see is actual a real mental illness that mimics jealousy but progresses in stages, just like Leontes.
First this unfounded jealousy seems to come on suddenly and usually the wife is suspected to have had an affair with the best friend, although there is no evidence.
Secondly there is a desire and attempt to kill the friend and a rejection of the wife.
Thirdly there is a deep depression that can last days, weeks, and even years.
According to Stewart, this information helped him as an actor to understand his character.
Shakespeare was a great observer of his fellow man and this is just another example.
To what extent is Leontes's jealousy in The Winter's Tale justifiable?
Shakespeare's The Winter’s Tale, a complex play which contains elements of tragedy, comedy, and romance, unfolds in two parts, with acts 1–3 occurring sixteen years before acts 4 and 5.
In the first part of the play, Polixenes, King of Bohemia, is the guest of Leontes, King of Sicilia, his friend since boyhood. When Polixenes decides to return to Bohemia at the beginning of act 1, scene 2, Leontes urges him to stay longer in Sicilia, and asks his wife, Hermione, to persuade Polixenes to extend his visit with them.
Within a very short period of time—barely thirty-five lines, or about two minutes of stage time—Hermione persuades Polixenes to stay in Sicilia.
Almost immediately, Leontes becomes suspicious and jealous of Hermione and Polixenes. Leontes decides, based on no evidence whatsoever, that Polixenes and Hermione are secret lovers.
Leontes enlists his friend, Camillo, to poison Polixenes. Camillo thinks better of his arrangement with Leontes to kill Polixenes, and rather than poison Polixenes (and quickly end the play), Camillo risks his own life by revealing Leontes's plan to Polixenes, whereupon Camillo and Polixenes decide that discretion is the better part of valor and leave Bohemia as fast as they can.
Aside from the speed with which Hermione convinces Polixenes to stay in Bohemia—almost as if there was already a plan in place between Polixenes and Hermione for Polixenes to stay—there is no evidence that Polixenes and Hermione have any kind of secret, amorous relationship.
Leontes's jealousy of Polixenes and his belief in Hermione's infidelity appears completely irrational. If Polixenes and Hermione previously conspired to have Polixenes stay in Bohemia for their own purposes, the issue would never have arisen with Leontes. Polixenes would not have said that he was leaving Bohemia, and he would simply had stayed in Bohemia, and with Hermione, without being asked by Leontes or persuaded by Hermione to do so.
No other character in the play has any idea or gives any indication that Leontes has the emotional capacity for the level of jealousy that he exhibits towards Polixenes and Hermione. Leontes gives no indication in the early part of the play that he's at all inclined towards jealousy or that he's even beginning to have any jealous feelings towards Polixenes until his jealousy erupts, catching everyone by surprise.
Also, Leontes has been married to Hermione for several years, and he hasn't previously demonstrated any jealousy towards her or any other of their shared male friends. Additionally, Polixenes has been staying with Leontes and Hermione for nine months when Leontes's jealousy suddenly manifests itself.
As a measure of Leontes's irrational frame of mind, it took far longer and required much more manipulation, insinuation, innuendo, and staged scenarios on Iago's part to inflame Othello's jealousy in Othello to the same level of murderous rage that Leontes's jealousy reaches in just a few minutes. In all, Leontes's frighteningly swift, intense, and all-consuming jealousy simply defies rational explanation.
In The Winter's Tale, how does Leontes' jealousy contribute to his downfall?
I think the play makes it quite clear that it is the irrational jealousy of Leontes that is responsible for the problems that he faces later on in the play after he has acted on that irrational jealousy. The situation that Leontes faces seems to be one of his own making. Let us remember that in Act I it is he that asks his wife to intercede with Polixenes to ask him to stay for longer, and then he turns around and suspects her of infidelity after he has pushed them together. Note how the irrational nature of his jealousy is stressed by the way that nobody shares his suspicions. When Leontes tells Camillo, for example, Camillo does not believe that this could be possible. Even in Act III when Hermione is formally tried for adultery, Leontes ignores the words of the oracle that protests Hermione's innocence and proves that she is chaste and has been loyal to her husband. It is the determination of Leontes to act on his own irrational and unsupported suspicions that threaten his own downfall and results in the death of his wife and his estrangement from his child.
How do you explain Leontes' jealousy in The Winter's Tale?
This is an excellent question. Since Shakespeare explored jealously in Othello, it appears that jealousy is not what is important but the results of that jealousy is what he wanted to explore.
Several years ago, I was fortunate to be in a class where the actor Patrick Stewart, who played Leontes in a Royal Shakespeare Company production was a class guest. He told us that he was having trouble understanding Leontes and as an actor, needed to understand why Leontes "out of the blue" so to speak becomes insanely jealous. He consulted a psychiatrist friend and asked him about it.
The result was a discovery that Shakespeare has delineated a real mental illness. Each step of the illness, which can be confused with jealousy, happens to Leontes just as the real disease progresses.
Shakespeare was a great observer of his fellow man and must have observed someone behave in this manner and filed away this knowledge for future use.
Hope this helps.