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Polixenes is the king of Bohemia and a close childhood friend of Leontes. Yet despite their friendship, something goes terribly wrong at the end of Polixenes’s visit to Sicilia, when Leontes baselessly accuses him of committing adultery with his wife, Hermione. When seen in contrast to Leontes in the first act, Polixenes appears to be an even-tempered man. Furthermore, whereas Leontes’s observations of Polixenes and Hermione are tinged with jealous hallucination, Polixenes has a remarkable clarity of perception. After all, he discovers the plot on his life during an otherwise polite chat with Camillo, whom Polixenes notices attempting to hide a nervous discomfort. The Bohemian king gently draws out Camillo’s secret, then shrewdly recruits the Sicilian lord to his aid. But whereas Leontes transforms from a tyrannical figure to a contrite one, Polixenes moves in the opposite direction. In the fourth act, when he goes in disguise to the country sheep-shearing and discovers his son Florizell’s secret courtship, he bursts into a tyrannical rage that recalls that of Leontes in the first act. After threatening the lives and livelihoods of the countryfolk Florizell has associated with, Polixenes storms off. He only reappears in the play’s final scene, after his joyful reunion with Leontes has already taken place offstage.
