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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Imprisonment:
Hermione's conversation with Polixenes in Act 1, Scene 2 features an extended metaphor that jokingly compares staying in someone else's home as a guest to imprisonment. Encouraging Polixenes to stay longer in Sicilia, Hermione says, "Force me to keep you as a prisoner, / Not like a guest, so you shall pay your fees / When you depart and save your thanks." When Polixenes responds that he would rather be her guest than her prisoner, Hermione declares she will not be his "jailer," but rather his "hostess." Despite the playful tone of this exchange, this metaphor not only reveals that the threat of imprisonment or darker political consequences is always close at hand in the Sicilian court, but also foreshadows Hermione's own, actual imprisonment by Leontes later in the play.
Related Themes:
Act 1, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Childhood Innocence:
The characters of "The Winter's Tale" often describe childhood as a time of innocence untainted by sin. In Act 1, Scene 1, Polixenes describes his childhood with Leontes with an attitude of longing for a simpler time:
Unlock with LitCharts A+We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun
And bleat the one at th’ other. What we changed
Was innocence for innocence. We knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne’er been higher reared
With stronger blood, we should have answered heaven
Boldly “Not guilty,” the imposition cleared
Hereditary ours.
Related Themes:
Act 4, Scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Red and White:
In Act 4, Scene 4, Autolycus bursts into a song that uses the imagery of red and white:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh, the doxy over the dale,
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge [...]
Related Themes:
Act 4, Scene 4
Explanation and Analysis—Proserpina and Dis:
In Act 4, Scene 4, Perdita alludes to figures from classical mythology while selecting flowers for the Shepherdesses: "O Proserpina, / For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall / From Dis’s wagon!" Perdita's allusion to the myth of Proserpina, who was abducted by the god of the underworld, Dis, and returned to the earth after six months, foreshadows her own return from Bohemia to her home in Sicilia.
Perdita also goes on to allude to Phoebus, the Roman name for Apollo, who is the source of the play's central prophecy:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength—a malady
Most incident to maids
Act 5, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Resurrection:
In Act 5, Scene 1, Paulina reminds Leontes of the magnitude of his loss of Hermione. Leontes declares that he will never marry again because doing so would anger the ghost of his late wife:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Thou speak’st truth.
No more such wives, therefore no wife. One worse,
And better used, would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
Where we offenders now appear, soul-vexed,
And begin “Why to me?”
Related Themes:
Act 5, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Statue:
In Act 5, Scene 2, three gentlemen discuss events among the members of the Sicilian court that are not depicted onstage. Not only does the conversation serve as a useful dramatic device to provide a summary of the reunion of Leontes and Paulina with Camillo, Perdita, Polixenes, and Florizell, but it is also an example of tongue-in-cheek foreshadowing of Hermione's resurrection through the statue at the end of the play.
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