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Cuckold’s Horns
In act 1, scene 2, as Leontes comes to believe that his wife and his best friend have been having an affair, he makes numerous references to the horns of a cuckold. The concept of a cuckold goes back to the medieval period, and it refers to a man whose wife has sex with another man. The name derives from the cuckoo bird, which is known to lay its eggs in other birds’ nests. However, European folklore also relates the cuckold to the stag, the males of which species are known to yield their mate when defeated by another male in combat. Thus, popular iconography in the medieval and early modern periods depicted the cuckolded male with stag-like horns. It is precisely this horn imagery that Leontes references several times in the play’s second scene. At one point he describes an “infection of my brains / And hard’ning of my brows” (1.2.182–83). At another point a bit later, he succumbs to his growing anger and exclaims: “Inch thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a forked one!” (1.2.232). Though Leontes’s horns are figurative rather than literal, his multiple, obsessive references establish them as an important symbol of his perceived betrayal.
The Bear
Perhaps the most famous line in The Winter’s Tale isn’t a line at all—it’s a stage direction: “He exits, pursued by a bear” (3.3.64). Although the bear appears only briefly in the play, and in fact may not appear at all in some stagings, this creature has a more complex significance than it may at first appear. On the one hand, the bear is a clear symbol for the fearsome danger to which Perdita has just been consigned. Having been deposited alone in the Bohemian wilderness, it’s likely that she too will end up as some forest creature’s dinner. On the other hand, the bear also has rhetorical significance. The Shepherd’s Son suggests as much in an offhand comment to his father, where he claims that “authority be a stubborn bear” (4.4.934). As so often happens in Shakespeare, throwaway comments by rustic figures can carry a lot of symbolic weight. In this case, the young man’s comment calls to mind the tyrannical madness of Leontes, which made him so stubborn as to reject even the oracle from Delphos. This same comment also references Florizell’s stubbornness in refusing to invite his father to his wedding, as well as Polixenes’s stubbornness in refusing to forgive his son this slight.
Perdita’s Fardel
When Antigonus abandons the child Perdita in the Bohemian wilderness, he leaves with her a “fardel”—that is, a bundle—containing gold and other valuable objects. This bundle of gold has a twofold significance in the play. On the level of the play’s action, it serves as a sign of the child’s nobility. The idea is that anyone who might come upon her will find the bundle and, seeing what it contains, interpret the riches as a symbol of her noble birth. This symbolism doesn’t quite work out, though. When the Shepherd and his son open the bundle and find gold, they associate it not with royal blood but with fairy magic. This association causes them to view the child as a “changeling” whose miraculous appearance has suddenly made them rich. On another level, however, the audience recognizes this gold-rich “fardel” not just as a symbol of Perdita’s inheritance, but as the inheritance itself. It’s therefore a bit shocking to find out later that the Shepherd and his son have used their windfall to expand their holdings. It would seem that, with the spending of Perdita’s financial inheritance (literal), her royal inheritance (figurative) has also been squandered.
