Characters
- Leontes – The King of Sicily, and the childhood friend of the Bohemian King Polixenes. He is gripped by jealous fantasies, which convince him that Polixenes has been having an affair with his wife, Hermione. His jealousy leads to the destruction of his family.
- Hermione – The virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicily. Falsely accused of infidelity by her husband, Leontes, she apparently dies of grief just after being vindicated by the Oracle of Delphi, but is restored to life at the play's close.
- Perdita – The daughter of Leontes and Hermione. Because her father believes her to be illegitimate, she is abandoned as a baby on the coast of Bohemia, and brought up by a Shepherd. Unaware of her royal lineage, she falls in love with the Bohemian Prince Florizel.
- Polixenes – The King of Bohemia, and Leontes's boyhood friend. He is falsely accused of having an affair with Leontes's wife, and barely escapes Sicily with his life. Much later in life, he sees his only son fall in love with a lovely Shepherd's daughter—who is, in fact, a Sicilian princess.
- Florizel – Polixenes's only son and heir. He falls in love with Perdita, unaware of her royal ancestry, and defies his father by eloping with her.
- Camillo – An honest Sicilian nobleman, he refuses to follow Leontes's order to poison Polixenes, deciding instead to flee Sicily and enter the Bohemian King's service.
- Paulina – A noblewoman of Sicily, she is fierce in her defence of Hermione's virtue, and unrelenting in her condemnation of Leontes after Hermione's death. She is also the agent of the (apparently) dead Queen's resurrection.
- Autolycus – A roguish peddler, vagabond, and pickpocket. He steals the Clown's purse and does a great deal of pilfering at the Shepherd's sheep-shearing, but ends by assisting in Perdita and Florizel's escape.
- Shepherd – An old and honorable sheep-tender, he finds Perdita as a baby and raises her as his own daughter.
- Antigonus – Paulina's husband, and also a loyal defender of Hermione. He is given the unfortunate task of abandoning the baby Perdita on the Bohemian coast.
- Clown – The Shepherd's buffoonish son, and Perdita's adopted brother.
- Mamillius – The young prince of Sicily, Leontes and Hermione's son. He dies, perhaps of grief, after his father wrongly imprisons his mother.
- Cleomenes – A lord of Sicily, sent to Delphi to ask the Oracle about Hermione's guilt.
- Dion – A Sicilian lord, he accompanies Cleomenes to Delphi.
- Emilia – One of Hermione's ladies-in-waiting.
- Archidamus – A lord of Bohemia.
Read more about this topic: The Winter's Tale
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“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that’s basically a conservative view of life.”
—Jane Smiley (b. 1949)
“The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)