The play's motif of loss raises the question of whether Leontes's actions in the first three Acts can ever be redeemed. A crucial factor in his redemption is the loss and recovery of Perdita. Believing that she is Polixenes's child rather than his own, Leontes instructs Antigonus in Act 3, Scene 2 to leave her to the mercy of the elements on a deserted coast. Before abandoning her, Antigonus gives Perdita her name because "the babe / Is counted lost forever." Since Perdita's name means "the lost one" in Latin and "loss" in Italian, it foregrounds the question of whether Leontes can ever reconstruct the family he destroyed by reuniting with his lost daughter, thus making amends for his past crimes.
The repetition of the word "undone" in Act 4, Scene 4 similarly contributes to the motif of loss. When Polixenes discovers that Florizell intends to marry Perdita despite their difference in status, he threatens to disown Florizell. Perdita responds, "Even here undone." Perdita's use of the phrase "[e]ven here" compares the potential "undoing" or breakdown of Polixenes' family to the actual one of Leontes's family in the previous Acts, and the Shepherd goes on to repeat the word to lament this imminent loss. The repetition suggests that Polixenes may experience a similar kind of loss to what Leontes has suffered. In this way, the motif of loss creates tension throughout the play around the question of whether what has been lost can be found and thus allow Leontes to redeem himself.
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.
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:
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.
Polixenes claims that, as children, he and Leontes were entirely unaware of the possibility of immoral behavior. Had they remained in that state of total and oblivious innocence, they would have gone to heaven untainted by sin. He tells Hermione, however, that their encounters with women removed them from that state: "Temptations have since then been born to ’s, for / In those unfledged days was my wife a girl; / Your precious self had then not crossed the eyes / Of my young playfellow." Polixenes thus suggests that this childhood innocence is irrevocably lost when one comes of age.
The motif of childhood innocence reappears in Act 2, Scene 2, when Paulina expresses her hope that Leontes will "soften at the sight" of his newborn daughter. She notes that "The silence often of pure innocence / Persuades when speaking fails." When seeing his baby still fails to persuade Leontes of Hermione's innocence later in the play, Paulina's hopes are crushed. By affirming the purity and preciousness of childhood, this motif accentuates the abhorrence of Leontes's behavior in causing the deaths (or presumed deaths) of his children.
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 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:
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?”
This image of Hermione's ghost appearing on the stage is an example of foreshadowing: when she is resurrected at the end of the play, her body is literally possessed and begins to walk on stage. At this point, there is no reason for the audience to expect that Hermione's spirit will "Again possess her corpse," but the unsettling image sticks in their minds and prepares them for what happens later. Compounded by three Gentlemen's references to a statue with a mysterious resemblance to Hermione in Act 5, Scene 2, it increases the audience's curiosity about and anticipation for the unveiling of the statue.
Moreover, Leontes's reference to a "stage" also breaks the fourth wall and calls attention to the play's own nature as a form of artifice, which contributes to the motif of acting, disguises, and stagecraft throughout the play.
