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It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in ’t. I’ll not call you tyrant;
But this most cruel usage of your queen,
Not able to produce more accusation
Than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savors
Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,
Yea, scandalous to the world. (2.3.148–55)
Paulina addresses these sharp words to Leontes, who persists in his cruel accusations of adultery against his wife. A staunch defender of Hermione’s virtue, Paulina also shows herself to be a clear-eyed woman who boldly dares to call the king out on his delusions. Whereas Leontes’s male courtiers prove too fearful to question the king, Paulina takes a direct approach. By pointing out how his “weak-hinged fantasy” puts him in danger of becoming “ignoble” and acting “scandalous[ly],” she attempts to break the spell of his lunacy. Yet though she speaks in a way the king views as impertinent, Paulina is perfectly in control of her words. Note how she’s careful to “not call you tyrant,” but rather makes the slightly softer point that “something” in his actions “savors / Of tyranny.” Her shrewdness and bravery are commendable.
A thousand knees
Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,
Upon a barren mountain, and still winter
In storm perpetual, could not move the gods
To look that way thou wert. (3.2.231–35)
After she’s announced Hermione’s death, Paulina delivers a lengthy and powerful speech condemning Leontes for his folly. She punctuates that speech with these devastating lines, which prophesy that Leontes’s life will henceforth be as lonely and barren as winter bleakness. As she puts it, no amount of prayer or devotion will ever be able to sway the gods to favor him. Yet interestingly, despite condemning Leontes to a life of desolation, it will later become apparent that Paulina remains by his side for the next sixteen years, urging him on in his penitence. Thus, even as she rebukes the king in the harshest terms, she’s already preparing the way for his rehabilitation.
There is none worthy,
Respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods
Will have fulfilled their secret purposes.
For has not the divine Apollo said,
Is ’t not the tenor of his oracle,
That King Leontes shall not have an heir
Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall
Is all as monstrous to our human reason
As my Antigonus to break his grave
And come again to me—who, on my life,
Did perish with the infant. (5.1.42–52)
Sixteen years after the events that unravel the Sicilian royal family, Paulina is still by Leontes’s side, cultivating his shame. She accomplishes this by recalling to mind Hermione’s spotless virtue, though she does so negatively, by claiming that “there is none worthy” as “her that’s gone.” She also turns the proverbial screw by recalling the Delphic oracle from long ago, which prophesied that Leontes “shall not have an heir / Till his lost child be found.” Finally, she reminds that king that her own beloved husband is dead because of him. Yet for all her nagging, it’s as though Paulina knows what’s to come—that the lost child (Perdita) will be found, and that the only worthy one (Hermione) isn’t definitively “gone.” And indeed, in the scenes that follow, this is precisely what happens. Though Paulina doesn’t have a hand in Perdita’s return, she clearly orchestrates the queen’s miraculous “resurrection.”
