"Winter's Tale" and resisting generational transfer of power

The characters Leontes and Polixenes in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale appear to be opposing forces throughout the first three acts of the play. Yet, when the setting is taken to Bohemia, aspects of Polixenes’ character emerge that align him more with Leontes. The drama in Sicilia and Leontes’ overwhelming paranoia about Polixenes made me sympathize with Polixenes, who appears to be a sort of scapegoat for Leontes’ ire. We don’t learn much about Polixenes while he is in Sicilia; he is talked into staying in Sicilia rather than returning to his own kingdom, and his continued presence leads to Leontes’ paranoid attempt to poison Polixenes. I was on Polixenes’ side when he escaped back to Bohemia. However, in Act 4, the dynamic between Polixenes and his son Florizel reveal a king who would rather enforce a rigid hierarchy than allow his son to marry someone he loves. The effort he makes to embarrass Florizel and Florizel’s ensuing escape to Sicilia is analogous to Polixenes’ own escape from Sicilia in the first part of the play.

Readers and viewers know (or at least strongly suspect) that Perdita is Leontes’ rejected daughter, which creates strong dramatic irony in the Bohemia setting. At the conclusion of the play, I was left with the idea that neither king is particularly “good,” and that the actions of both Leontes and Polixenes boil down to both kings being unwilling to let go of their power and pass it on to the next generation. In Leontes’ case, he literally shuns his healthy heiress after the death of his favored son, and Polixenes won’t take seriously Florizel’s plans for his own life. In the end, there is an implied joining of Sicilia and Bohemia through Perdita and Florizel, but the question of whether Leontes and Polixenes will ultimately approve of the union and pass power to the next generation is left unanswered.