Winter's Tale and mediators -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 22:25:58 04/21/08 Mon
Author: Betsy Peters
Subject: Winter's Tale and mediators

As Leontes becomes more convinced of his wife's guilt, more and more characters attempt to create space between them. Antigonus, the servant who is ordered to kill Hermione's child, rebukes Leontes, "Let your justice / prove violence, in which three great ones suffer / Yourself, your queen, your son." Leontes sense of justice proves violence because he imagines causes which are not really even there, as Paulina remarks, "here's such a do to make no stain a stain, / As passes coloring". Leontes' imagined competition with his friend makes him imagine his wife's adultery. The narrative that he creates in his head becomes the play's new narrative for him and therefore leads to violence against the very object (his wife) that he sought to protect. Recognizing this, Paulina annouces that "I will stand betwixt you [Hermione] and danger [Leontes]" 2.2.67. She will be the last guard to create the distance necessary to ease the tension.

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