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Dramatic Irony
Key Examples in The Winter's Tale
Act 2, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Diseased Opinions:
In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare uses an extended metaphor to compare male mistrust of their wives to a disease. In Act 1, Scene 2, Camillo calls Leontes's growing distrust of his wife a "diseased opinion" and warns that it is "most dangerous." Later, he extends this metaphor when he tells Polixenes, "There is a sickness / Which puts some of us in distemper, but I cannot name the disease, and it is caught / Of you that yet are well." Camillo's language suggests that the disease of Leontes's mistrust is a contagious one originating in Polixenes, even though the latter is "yet...well" because he is not mistrustful himself.
In Act 2, Scene 1, Leontes's metaphor of a spider in his drink similarly identifies his distrust of his wife to the effects of consuming venom:
There may be in the cup
A spider steeped, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected; but if one present
Th’ abhorred ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
Related Themes:
