The Winter's Tale

by

William Shakespeare

Friendship and Love Theme Analysis

Read our modern English translation.
Themes and Colors
Loyalty, Fidelity, and Honesty Theme Icon
Friendship and Love Theme Icon
Youth, Age, and Time Theme Icon
Seriousness, Levity, and Humor Theme Icon
Evidence, Truth, Persuasion, and Belief Theme Icon
Justice and Natural Order Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Winter's Tale, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship and Love Theme Icon

The Winter’s Tale explores different kinds of relationships between family members, spouses, and friends. The play is especially interested in the strong friendship between Leontes and Polixenes. In the first scene of the play, Camillo and Archidamus speak of the kings’ close relationship, and soon after Polixenes describes the two of them as like “twinned lambs” in their youth, frolicking innocently together. Their perfect friendship is complicated, though, as they mature and take wives, moving from their male friendship (what some critics would term a “homosocial” relationship) toward heterosexual romance. This introduces the possibility of jealousy, which destroys the friendship between Polixenes and Leontes.

Part of the reason that marriage and romantic love complicate the strong friendship between the two kings is that it forces them to try to balance different degrees of love. Polixenes insists that he only loves Hermione as a friend, just as he loves Leontes. Leontes, however, interprets’ Polixenes’ affection toward Hermione as signs of a very different kind of love. This problem points to a recurrent theme throughout the play: the conflict between different kinds and degrees of love and affection. Florizell’s love for Perdita, for example, threatens to break up the familial love between his father and him. As the play progresses, various romances and friendships are complicated and broken up. But the play’s comic resolution ends with virtually all these relationships rebuilt. And in this happy ending, the play does not seem to prioritize one form of relationship over another. Leontes appears equally happy to be reunited with his long-time friend Polixenes and with his wife and daughter. The play thus celebrates the proliferation of human relationships that all arise out of some form of love—for a friend, for a child, for a spouse—without assuming that one is more important than the others.

Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…

Friendship and Love ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Friendship and Love appears in each scene of The Winter's Tale. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
scene length:
Get the entire The Winter's Tale LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Winter's Tale PDF

Friendship and Love Quotes in The Winter's Tale

Below you will find the important quotes in The Winter's Tale related to the theme of Friendship and Love.
Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes

We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' the sun,
And bleat the one at the other: what we changed
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd
With stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven
Boldly 'not guilty;' the imposition clear'd
Hereditary ours.

Related Characters: Polixenes (speaker), Leontes
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 1.2.85-94
Explanation and Analysis:

Too hot, too hot!
To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.
I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances;
But not for joy; not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,
And well become the agent; 't may, I grant;
But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,
As now they are, and making practised smiles
As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as 'twere
The mort o' the deer; O, that is entertainment
My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,
Art thou my boy?

Related Characters: Leontes (speaker), Polixenes, Hermione
Page Number: 1.2.139-151
Explanation and Analysis:

Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing 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.

Related Characters: Leontes (speaker), Polixenes, Hermione
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 1.2.346-359
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 2 Quotes

For Polixenes,
With whom I am accused, I do confess
I loved him as in honour he required,
With such a kind of love as might become
A lady like me, with a love even such,
So and no other, as yourself commanded:
Which not to have done I think had been in me
Both disobedience and ingratitude
To you and toward your friend, whose love had spoke,
Even since it could speak, from an infant, freely
That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy,
I know not how it tastes; though it be dish'd
For me to try how: all I know of it
Is that Camillo was an honest man;
And why he left your court, the gods themselves,
Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

Related Characters: Hermione (speaker), Leontes, Polixenes, Camillo
Page Number: 3.2.65-81
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 4, Scene 4 Quotes

POLIXENES
Mark your divorce, young sir,
Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base
To be acknowledged: thou a sceptre's heir,
That thus affect'st a sheep-hook! Thou old traitor,
I am sorry that by hanging thee I can
But shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece
Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know
The royal fool thou copest with, —

SHEPHERD
O, my heart!

POLIXENES
I'll have thy beauty scratch'd with briers, and made
More homely than thy state. For thee, fond boy,
If I may ever know thou dost but sigh
That thou no more shalt see this knack, as never
I mean thou shalt, we'll bar thee from succession;
Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin,
Far than Deucalion off: mark thou my words:
Follow us to the court. Thou churl, for this time,
Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee
From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment.—
Worthy enough a herdsman: yea, him too,
That makes himself, but for our honour therein,
Unworthy thee, —if ever henceforth thou
These rural latches to his entrance open,
Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,
I will devise a death as cruel for thee
As thou art tender to't.

Related Characters: Polixenes (speaker), Shepherd (speaker), Florizell, Perdita
Page Number: 4.4.490-518
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 5, Scene 1 Quotes

Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you: were I but twenty-one,
Your father's image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us perform'd before. Most dearly welcome!
And your fair princess, —goddess! —O, alas!
I lost a couple, that 'twixt heaven and earth
Might thus have stood begetting wonder as
You, gracious couple, do: and then I lost—
All mine own folly —the society,
Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
Though bearing misery, I desire my life
Once more to look on him.

Related Characters: Leontes (speaker), Polixenes, Florizell, Perdita
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 5.1.157-171
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 5, Scene 3 Quotes

Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither'd bough and there
My mate, that's never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost.

Related Characters: Paulina (speaker), Antigonus
Page Number: 5.3.164-169
Explanation and Analysis:

O, peace, Paulina!
Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,
As I by thine a wife: this is a match,
And made between's by vows. Thou hast found mine;
But how, is to be question'd; for I saw her,
As I thought, dead, and have in vain said many
A prayer upon her grave. I'll not seek far—
For him, I partly know his mind —to find thee
An honourable husband. Come, Camillo
And take her by the hand, whose worth and honesty
Is richly noted and here justified
By us, a pair of kings.

Related Characters: Leontes (speaker), Hermione, Paulina, Camillo
Page Number: 5.3.170-182
Explanation and Analysis: