Character guide

Leontes

major

Also known as King Leontes, Leontes Go, Leontes Ha, Leontes Satisfy, Leontes Good Paulina, Leontes Prithee, Leontes O Paulina, Leontes O sweet Paulina, Leontes Cease, Leontes Though, Leontes No

Leontes rules Sicilia as a man whose happiness seems settled: a beloved queen, a promising young son, and a boyhood friendship with Bohemia's king he still treasures. That security curdles in an instant into obsessive suspicion, and he pursues his imagined betrayal with a prosecutor's ferocity, ignoring every voice of reason. His refusal to be talked out of it drives the play's central catastrophe and sets the long penance that shapes everything after.

Hermione

major

Also known as Queen Hermione, Hermione Grace, Grace, Hermione Nay, Hermione Sir

Hermione moves through the court with an easy authority, teasing Mamillius into a winter's tale and urging Polixenes to stay with hospitable charm. When Leontes publicly names her an adulteress, she answers not with panic but with steady, wounded dignity, insisting he merely mistakes. Her composure under accusation makes the injustice unbearable to watch and anchors the play's meditation on how easily a good name can be unmade.

Polixenes

major

Also known as King Polixenes, Polixenes Soft, Polixenes This, Polixenes And, Polixenes Prithee, Exeunt Polixenes

Polixenes arrives in Sicilia as a brother-king, trading fond memories of a shared boyhood and gently resisting Leontes' pleas to stay longer. Warned by Camillo of the plot against his life, he flees home, and years later turns his own watchful royal eye on his son's mysterious absences. His friendship with Leontes is the play's first casualty, and his later role as a father who cannot control his heir keeps the older generation's mistakes echoing into the next.

Perdita

major

Also known as Perdita Ay

Perdita grows up tending sheep yet speaks and carries herself like someone born to better, presiding over the sheep-shearing feast as its 'mistress' with a dignity that puzzles her rustic family. She loves Prince Florizel and dreads the moment his royal father will judge her unworthy, arguing fiercely that true worth is not a matter of blood or breeding. Her hidden identity makes her both the play's great mystery and its promise of restoration.

Florizel

major

Also known as Prince Florizel, the Prince Florizel, Florizel O, Florizel Now, Florizel O Perdita, Florizel Worthy Camillo, Florizel Camillo, Florizel Fortune, Florizel Old sir

Florizel is the son Polixenes watches with growing unease, slipping away from court and princely exercises to linger at a cottage. He loves Perdita openly and without apology, courting her at the sheep-shearing feast in disguise and defying his father's fury when it comes. His willingness to risk succession for love puts him in direct conflict with the older generation's ideas about rank and obedience.

Camillo

major

Also known as Camillo Ay, Camillo Sir, the good Camillo, good Camillo, Camillo Sicilia, Sicilia, Camillo Good, Lord Camillo, Camillo⁠

Camillo opens the play as Leontes' trusted counselor, praising the old friendship with Bohemia and the young prince Mamillius. Ordered to poison Polixenes, he warns the intended victim instead and flees with him, trading one court for another rather than commit murder. His steady moral compass makes him the play's quiet hinge, moving between kings and later guiding the young lovers when their own plans collapse.

Paulina

supporting

Also known as the Lady Paulina, Paulina O Hermione

Paulina stands alone in Leontes's court as the one voice he cannot bully into silence, challenging his slander of Hermione when lords and courtiers bow. Her loyalty is ferocious and personal: she loses a husband to the king's orders yet never stops demanding justice for her queen. When she stages a private gallery showing for Leontes and his guests, she turns patience into theater, and the play's coldest grief begins to thaw.

Antigonus

supporting

Antigonus is ordered to carry the infant Perdita to a foreign shore and abandon her, a task he performs with dread and a famous stage direction trailing behind him. His marriage to Paulina makes him the play's great domestic irony: a man who fears his wife's tongue yet cannot escape her moral clarity. The letters and tokens he leaves with the child become the evidence that later proves her royal birth.

Mamillius

supporting

Also known as Exit Mamillius, Exit, Mamillius Ay, Mamillius Merry

Mamillius is the darling of Sicilia, a boy whose promise makes old men want to live and whose mother's lap is his natural throne. He offers Hermione a sad tale for winter, one of sprites and goblins told softly so the crickets cannot hear. When his father's jealousy turns the court into a place of accusation, the boy is torn from his mother's side, and the play's grief acquires a face too young to deserve it.

Autolycus

supporting

Also known as Autolycus Age, Enter Autolycus, Autolycus Neither, Autolycus The fardel

Autolycus arrives at the sheep-shearing with ballads, ribbons, and a hand in every purse, selling love songs to maids and lifting the clown's money while pretending to be the victim of a robbery. He is the play's comic engine, a rogue who names himself in the third person and treats thievery as a profession with a curriculum. His cheerful amorality throws the shepherds' honest festivity into relief and keeps the pastoral world from turning sentimental.

Shepherd

supporting

Also known as Shepherd None, Shepherd Fie, Shepherd Ay, Shepherd Sir

The Shepherd is a plain man of the fields whose life changes when he discovers an infant with gold and tokens beside her, and he keeps those proofs against a day he half expects. He dotes on Perdita, boasting of her dancing and hinting that whoever wins her will get more than he dreams of. His cottage becomes the stage for the play's great pastoral festival, and his honesty is the foil to courtly corruption.

Clown

supporting

Also known as Prithee Clown, Clown Prithee, Clown Alack, Clown Alas, Clown Dost, Clown Ay, Clown See, Clown Comfort

The Clown is practical, credulous, and generous, the sort of man who helps a groaning stranger to his feet and offers him money on the spot. His encounter with the disguised Autolycus shows both his decency and his comic blindness, since the rogue robs him while accepting his kindness. At the sheep-shearing he fusses over Mopsa and Dorcas and buys trinkets with money he no longer has, grounding the play's pastoral scenes in ordinary human appetite.

Dion

minor

Also known as Cleomenes Dion

A lord of Sicilia sent to Delphi to consult the oracle.

Cleomenes

minor

Also known as Cleomenes Sir, Cleomenes Great Apollo

A lord of Sicilia who travels with Dion to the oracle at Delphi.

Third Gentleman

minor

Also known as Gentleman One

A gentleman who recounts the reunion of Leontes and Perdita.

Emilia

minor

Lady-in-waiting to Hermione, who attends her during her trial and imprisonment.

Archidamus

minor

A lord of Bohemia who speaks with Camillo in the opening scene.

Dorcas

minor

Also known as Dorcas Whither, Dorcas What, Dorcas Mopsa, Dorcas Bless

A shepherdess in Bohemia who sings and dances at the sheep-shearing festival.

Mopsa

minor

A shepherdess in Bohemia, friend of Dorcas, at the sheep-shearing festival.

First Lord

minor

Also known as First Lord Good

A lord of Sicilia who reports on court matters to Leontes.