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Hermione’s innocence is never in doubt; every character in the play testifies to it, and the oracle confirms it. Therefore, Leontes’s suspicions of his wife and best friend are clearly irrational. As a victim of misplaced jealousy, he resembles one of the most famous Shakespearean heroes, Othello, who murders his wife Desdemona because he believes her to be unfaithful. But Othello is led into error by his villainous aide, Iago, whereas Leontes is his own Iago—the entire dream of adultery is concocted within his own mind. The play offers subtle hints about the source of Leontes’s jealousy. For instance, though close friends in their boyhood, the literal and figurative distance that has since grown between Leontes and Polixenes has perhaps led to a misreading of intentions on the Sicilian king’s part. But this alone isn’t enough to enough to explain either the intensity of his jealousy or the rapidity with which it mounts into a tyrannical madness. As Leontes says to Hermione in the court scene, “Your actions are my dreams” (3.2.88). That is, he has allowed his nightmares to infect his view of the waking world.
Read more about how jealousy plays a thematic role in Shakespeare’s Othello.
In Mamillius’s words, “A sad tale’s best for winter” (2.1.33). The first three acts are set in a Sicilian winter and are determinedly sad. Indeed, these acts offer a kind of miniature tragedy, as Leontes’s errors, like Lear’s or Othello’s, bring death and destruction down upon his family and kingdom. What makes The Winter’s Tale a romance, rather than a tragedy, is the abrupt shift in mood after Time announces the passage of sixteen years at the top of act 4. At this point, the action shifts decisively to Bohemia. Winter comes to an end, and spring enters, bringing with it the promise of rebirth. And as the seasons change, so the story shifts away from tragedy and into the realm of fairytale and romantic comedy. The imagery of act 4 is dominated by the flowers that Perdita wears and dispenses as hostess of the sheep-shearing, and the mood of the act is elaborated in the cheerful songs of Autolycus. This spirit is eventually brought back to Sicilia, where act 5 undoes much of what seemed so tragic in act 3: Perdita is restored to her rightful home, Hermione is restored to life, and Paulina is given a new husband. The Winter’s Tale, then, ends the way all winters end: by eventually succumbing to spring renewal.
Read about another work that uses seasons as a motif, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
There is evidence on both sides of this question. Paulina, who orchestrates the entire scene—and who ostensibly commissioned the statue—seems remarkably unsurprised by the “miracle,” and she is, after all, our only witness to the fact that Hermione actually died. Her behavior in the years since suggests a foreknowledge of her queen’s return, as she steadfastly keeps the king fixated on his own guilt and on the impossibility of ever marrying again. On the other hand, if the entire business is only a trick, it seems rather an over-the-top stunt for two level-headed women like Hermione and Paulina to orchestrate. And no one who witnesses the miracle raises even a hint of doubt as to whether the statue was ever an actual statue. Clearly, Shakespeare wants to have it both ways: a genuine miracle to cap off his “Tale,” and a hint of a naturalistic explanation for the audience. In either case, the miracle is an appropriate conclusion to the play, since it provides for a truly happy ending that Hermione’s death had seemed to place out of reach.
