The aristocratic characters of "The Winter's Tale" often use an extended metaphor, applying political language to members of the family unit. As monarchs, Leontes and Polixenes must preserve their families in order to ensure that they produce heirs who will rule their respective kingdoms in the future. Therefore, their use of this metaphor highlights the way in which their social position makes domestic and political matters inextricable from each other.
For example, in Act 1, Scene 2, Polixenes uses a metaphor to describe his son as "Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy, / My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all." His characterization of his son using military terms is facetious, but it reveals the political importance of his son for the continued governance of his state.
Likewise, when Leontes begins to suspect that his wife is disloyal, Polixenes declares in the same scene that "The King hath on him such a countenance / As he had lost some province and a region / Loved as he loves himself." By comparing Leontes's presumed loss of his wife to the loss of a province of his kingdom, this simile highlights the fact that a monarch requires a wife to produce an heir.
Later, Leontes makes explicit this relationship when he laments the consequences of his past wrongdoings for the governance of his kingdom: "The wrong I did myself, which was so much / That heirless it hath made my kingdom." The extended metaphor of political language illustrates the fact that, for Leontes and Polixenes, the breakdown of the family unit has higher stakes because it impedes the continuation of the royal lineage and thus threatens the future of the kingdom.
When Hermione asks Polixenes in Act 1, Scene 2 about his childhood friendship with Leontes, Polixenes responds with a wistful description:
We were twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun
And bleat the one at th’ other. What we changed
Was innocence for innocence.
His simile comparing the two children to "twinned lambs" is significant because it connotes harmony, even unity, between Leontes and Polixenes that has now been lost.
Indeed, the play begins in Act 1, Scene 1 with Camillo's description of the two monarchs' geographical estrangement, though their relationship remains cordial:
Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, hath been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies...
Moreover, Polixenes's image of the lamb not only connotes Christian innocence, but also gains greater significance in light of the prominence of sheep and shepherding in the play. It is the realm of shepherds and shepherdesses in the pastoral scene in Act 4 that ultimately allows for healing, rebirth, and the reconciliation of both Leontes's and Polixenes's families. Therefore, the pastoral gives Leontes and Polixenes a means of returning to the lamb-like innocence of their shared childhood despite the passage of time. Polixenes's simile thus contributes to the play's examination of whether childhood innocence can ever be regained.
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.
When Hermione asks Polixenes in Act 1, Scene 2 about his childhood friendship with Leontes, Polixenes responds with a wistful description:
We were twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun
And bleat the one at th’ other. What we changed
Was innocence for innocence.
His simile comparing the two children to "twinned lambs" is significant because it connotes harmony, even unity, between Leontes and Polixenes that has now been lost.
Indeed, the play begins in Act 1, Scene 1 with Camillo's description of the two monarchs' geographical estrangement, though their relationship remains cordial:
Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, hath been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies...
Moreover, Polixenes's image of the lamb not only connotes Christian innocence, but also gains greater significance in light of the prominence of sheep and shepherding in the play. It is the realm of shepherds and shepherdesses in the pastoral scene in Act 4 that ultimately allows for healing, rebirth, and the reconciliation of both Leontes's and Polixenes's families. Therefore, the pastoral gives Leontes and Polixenes a means of returning to the lamb-like innocence of their shared childhood despite the passage of time. Polixenes's simile thus contributes to the play's examination of whether childhood innocence can ever be regained.
