Polixenes: The Friend Who Triggers the Catastrophe
First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
Polixenes is in Sicilia on a visit that has already lasted nine months when the play begins. He wants to go home. Hermione persuades him to stay one more week. Leontes watches this exchange and becomes convinced they are lovers. Nothing in the exchange supports this reading. Polixenes is simply a man being persuaded by a charming queen to stay for breakfast.
He escapes to Bohemia after Camillo warns him of Leontes's plan to have him killed. He does not appear again until Act 4, sixteen years later, where he is now the one behaving badly. He has been secretly watching his son Florizel court a shepherd's daughter and is furious. He reveals himself at the festival in Act 4 Scene 4, threatens Perdita and the Shepherd, and orders Florizel to end the relationship.
He is not cruel. He is a king who has decided that his son cannot marry beneath him, which was a completely ordinary position in the period. But the play sets up his anger against Perdita alongside Leontes's anger against Hermione, and the parallel is uncomfortable. Both men refuse to see what is actually in front of them.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' the sun, and bleat the one at the other: what we changed was innocence for innocence.”
Polixenes — Act 1, Scene 2
“I'll have thy beauty scratch'd with briers, and made more homely than thy state.”
Polixenes — Act 4, Scene 4