In Act 1, Scene 2, Leontes articulates his paranoia about his wife's fidelity through the extended metaphor of the cuckold's horns. In Shakespeare's day, men with adulterous wives were often depicted in art and literature with ram's horns and were subject to mockery for being deceived by their wives. Throughout this scene, Leontes's language describes the metaphorical growth of cuckold's horns on his head as his belief in his wife's infidelity cements itself.
As Leontes watches Hermione give her hand to Polixenes to welcome him to the Sicilian court, he becomes suspicious of their intimacy. As he begins to imagine an affair between them, he calls these images "entertainment / My bosom likes not, nor my brows." While examining his son's face in search of evidence that he was fathered by another man, Leontes is unable to cast aside his suspicions and becomes increasingly agitated, which leads to the imagined "hard'ning of [his] brows" and thus the progression of the growth of his horns. Finally, once Hermione and Polixenes leave together for the garden, Leontes thinks they resemble a married couple and imagines horns affixing themselves to his head: "o'er head and ears a fork'd / one!" This extended metaphor highlights Leontes's fear that his wife's adultery will render him a fool. Of course, the metaphorical growth of Leontes's horns corresponds not to Hermione's actual infidelity, but rather to the amplification of Leontes's delusions. Ironically, it is Leontes's very fear of appearing foolish that turns him into a fool.
In Act 3, Scene 2, Paulina describes Leontes's earlier crimes as trivial despite how unjust they were. Knowing that speaking truth to Leontes will only make his delusions more intractable, she rehabilitates the power of her language by speaking only through negation—that is, by interweaving truths with her characterization of each of Leontes's past actions as trivial. Through this use of verbal irony, Paulina impresses upon Leontes the abhorrence of what he has done.
Indeed, even as Paulina characterizes each of his past actions as "nothing," she declares that his betrayal of Polixenes revealed him to be "a fool, inconstant / And damnable ingrateful," while commanding Camillo to murder Hermione ruined Camillo's honor. She adds that bringing about the death of his baby daughter was so unforgivable that even "a devil / Would have shed water out of fire ere done ’t," and causing his son's death from a broken heart revealed Leontes to be a "gross and foolish" father.
This ironic trivialization of Leontes's other crimes amplifies her final denunciation of the fact that he engineered Hermione's death: "But the last—O lords, / When I have said, cry woe!—the Queen, the Queen, / The sweet’st, dear’st creature’s dead, and vengeance for ’t / Not dropped down yet." In this way, Paulina's use of verbal irony allows her to bypass the impenetrable wall of Leontes's delusions and emphasize the abhorrence of his actions.
In Act 4, Scene 4, Polixenes and Camillo conceal their identities to visit Florizell and Perdita at the Shepherd's home. This is an example of dramatic irony because the audience knows their identities while the characters do not. In fact, oblivious to his father's disguise, Florizell reveals his plan to marry Perdita even without Polixenes's permission.
Without removing his disguise, Polixenes attempts to persuade Florizell to tell his father, warning him that to withhold this information would be to fail to fulfill his filial duties: "You offer him, if this be so, a wrong / Something unfilial." Although he repeatedly tells Florizell, "Let him know ’t," Florizell continues to resist, declaring that "He shall not." This use of dramatic irony, escalated by Florizell's repeated refusal to do as his father demands, creates suspense for the audience during the scene because they are aware that Florizell has unwittingly doomed his own marriage. It becomes clear that, in going ahead with his plan to marry Perdita without telling Polixenes, Florizell is in the act of doing "something unfilial" at this very moment, though Florizell himself, oblivious to Polixenes' presence, does not know it.
While on trial in Act 3, Scene 2, Hermione declares that Leontes has conjured false accusations against her, as if dreaming them up: "My life stands in the level of your dreams." Leontes's response—"Your actions are my dreams"—is a source of dramatic irony: his intended meaning is that Hermione has enacted in reality what he has dreamed, that is, adultery. However, the audience knows that an alternative meaning of his response is true: Hermione's purported adultery is a mere figment of his imagination. Hermione never committed adultery, and Leontes has indeed "dream[ed]" her actions.
Leontes continues, "You had a bastard by Polixenes, / And I but dreamed it." This is an example of verbal and dramatic irony all at once: Leontes intends his remark to be sarcastic and means the opposite of his words (an instance of verbal irony), but the audience knows that Leontes has inadvertently said the truth—that he has conjured Hermione's infidelity out of thin air (an instance of dramatic irony). This double irony, in which Leontes's use of verbal irony becomes an instance of dramatic irony, highlights how deeply entrenched Leontes's belief in Hermione's infidelity has become.
In Acts 4 and 5, multiple characters disguise themselves: Camillo and Polixenes to spy on Florizell and Perdita at the shepherd's cottage, Autolycus as a nobleman to swindle the Shepherd and his son, and Perdita and Florizell to travel to Sicily. A generic convention of the Shakespearean comedy, this use of disguises generates dramatic irony, thus contributing to both the suspense and the humorous tone of the last two Acts. Moreover, by creating mishaps around mistaken identities and obstructing the characters' access to the truth, the use of disguises highlights the unreliability of perception that provoked Leontes's downfall: once convinced of Hermione's unfaithfulness, no amount of evidence could persuade him to see the truth.
The play also breaks the fourth wall by pointing to its own nature as a work of art. In fact, Perdita's language explicitly compares her use of disguise in her travels to Sicily to acting in a play: "I see the play so lies / That I must bear a part." Later, in Act 5, Scene 1, Leontes makes explicit reference to "this stage / Where we offenders now appear." By calling attention to the play's own nature as a form of artifice and and suggesting that plays, disguises, and acting enable the reunification of the family unit, Shakespeare illuminates the potentially redemptive power of art.
Act 5, Scene 1 features the long-awaited reunion of Leontes with his daughter Perdita, who is accompanied by Florizell. However, since both Florizell and Perdita are in disguise and Leontes does not know that Florizell's bride-to-be is his own daughter, this creates dramatic irony that generates humor as well as increases the suspense of the scene. For example, when Leontes expresses his longing for children like Florizell and Perdita, wondering, "What might I have been / Might I a son and daughter now have looked on, / Such goodly things as you?", the audience knows that Florizell may soon be his son-in-law and Perdita is his daughter, but Leontes does not. This use of dramatic irony increases the audience's anticipation for the reunion of father with daughter.
The dramatic irony of this scene also becomes a source of comedy. When Florizell declares that his father gives precious gifts like "trifles," Leontes accidentally flirts with his own daughter: "Would he do so, I'd beg your precious mistress, / Which he counts but a trifle." To comedic effect, Paulina chides Leontes for admiring women who are too young for him, saying that his "eye hath too much youth in ’t." This contributes to the humorous and lighthearted mood of these latter Acts of the play.
Leontes's repeated characterization of the adulterous behavior he claims to have perceived—but has largely imagined—between his wife and Polixenes as "nothing" is an example of dramatic irony. When Camillo attempts to refute Leontes's claims of Hermione's infidelity in Act 1, Scene 2, Leontes demands:
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible
Of breaking honesty. Horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift? Hours minutes? Noon midnight? And all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in ’t is nothing, The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
Here, Leontes hyperbolically asserts that Hermione's apparent infidelity is so irrefutable that if it isn't true, then neither is the world or anything in it. However, the audience has been exposed to the same interactions between Hermione and Polixenes that Leontes has interpreted as conclusive proof of romantic intimacy and knows that they are mere signs of friendship. As a result, Leontes's claim is an example of dramatic irony. The play's use of dramatic irony here thus highlights the fact that what Leontes claims to "note" is, in fact, nothing; his unfounded belief in his wife's infidelity has contaminated his perception and left him unable to see the truth.
As Leontes interrogates his son Mamillius in Act 1, Scene 2, in search of evidence that Hermione has been unfaithful, Leontes's use of similes provides insight into his distrust of women:
Women say so,
That will say anything.
But were they false
As o’erdyed blacks, as wind, as waters, false
As dice are to be wished by one that fixes
No bourn ’twixt his and mine, yet were it true
To say this boy were like me.
Here, Leontes uses similes to suggest that women are artificial like dyed hair, unstable like wind or water, and deceitful like rigged dice. Ironically, his professed view of women is subsequently disproven when he admits that what women have said is true in this case—that is, that his son resembles him. This is an example of situational irony because audiences might expect that, having made this admission about women's truthfulness, Leontes would then rethink his attitude about women overall, and yet he doesn't.
The fact that Leontes can acknowledge this discrepancy between his belief in women's unfaithfulness and the physical evidence that his son is his own, yet remain convinced that Hermione has been unfaithful, shows how intractable his delusion has become: Leontes only sees what he wants to see.
Through the motif of negation, "The Winter's Tale" illuminates how irrational human beliefs can be even in the face of clear evidence, as well as the female characters' lack of control over their own sexual reputations. Once Leontes falls prey to his unfounded belief that Hermione and Polixenes are having an affair, Hermione and Paulina find that their words can no longer persuade him to see the truth. In fact, Leontes asserts in Act 1, Scene 2 that a woman's word is always false: "Women say so, / That will say anything." As a result, the more Hermione claims that she is innocent, the more intractable Leontes's delusions become.
Instead, both Hermione and Paulina recuperate the power of their language by speaking only through negation. For example, when Hermione testifies in her own defense in Act 3, Scene 2, she declares:
Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation, and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say “Not guilty"
Here, Hermione observes that it would be pointless for her to declare herself "Not guilty" because that would contract Leontes's accusation against her, of which he is firmly convinced. However, by saying that she will not affirm her innocence, she ultimately does. After Hermione's death, Paulina uses a similar technique in Act 3, Scene 3 to force Leontes to confront his own wrongdoing:
I’ll speak of her no more, nor of your children. I’ll not remember you of my own lord,
Who is lost too. Take your patience to you,
And I’ll say nothing.
By saying that she will not speak of Leontes's wife or children—indeed, that she will "say nothing"—Paulina manages to do exactly the opposite. In the world of the play, women's word may be acknowledged only when couched in negations, rather than spoken openly.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Autolycus pretends to have been beaten and robbed so that he himself might rob the Shepherd's son. The dramatic irony here derives from the fact that the audience knows that Autolycus is scheming to commit a robbery because they are privy to his aside earlier in the scene—"If the springe hold, the cock’s / mine"—whereas the Shepherd's son is oblivious. The comedy of this encounter heightens when the Shepherd's son, unaware of Autolycus's machinations, offers him money, to which Autolycus responds, "Offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart." This is ironic not only because Autolycus is refusing money from the Shepherd's son despite intending to steal from him, but also because Autolycus is being offered a simpler and legal means of achieving his original goal—and is foolishly refusing it.
Moreover, when Autolycus describes his apparent attacker to the Shepherd's son, the audience realizes that he is describing himself:
I know this man well. He hath been since an ape-bearer, then a process-server, a bailiff. Then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker’s wife within a mile where my land and living lies, and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue. Some call him Autolycus.
Autolycus's declaration that he knows his attacker well is deeply ironic because he himself is the attacker. In this way, the dramatic irony of this scene contributes to the comedic tone of Act 4.
