Shakespeare - 5.2. Meet the characters

Meet the characters

Let's meet the characters of this play! Please make sure you try to remember the descriptions of the main characters for the actual play in Diever as you will need this in your essay writing!

Main characters

Leontes

The king of Sicilia and the childhood friend of Polixenes. He is gripped by jealous fantasies that convince him that Polixenes has been having an affair with his wife, Hermione. His jealousy leads to the destruction of his family.

Hermione

The virtuous and beautiful queen of Sicilia. Falsely accused of infidelity by her husband, Leontes, she apparently dies of grief just after being vindicated by the oracle of Delphi. She is to life at the play's close.

Perdita

The daughter of Leontes and Hermione. Because her father believes her to be illegitimate, she is abandoned as a baby on the coast of Bohemia and brought up by a sheperd. Unaware of her royal lineage, she falls in love with the Bohemian prince, Florizel.

Polixenes

The king of Bohemia and Leontes's boyhood friend. He is falsely accused of having an affair with Leontes's wife and barely escapes Sicilia alive. Much later in his life, he sees in only son fall in love with Perdita, who has been living as a lowly sheperd's daughter.

Florizel

Polixenes's only son and heir to the throne. He falls in love with Perdita, unaware of her royal ancestry, and defies his father be eloping with her.

Antigonus

Paulina's husband, and a loyal defender of Hermione. He is given the unfortunate task of abandoning the baby Perdita on the Bohemian coast.

Minor Characters

Camillo - An honest Sicilian nobleman. Camillo refuses to follow Leontes's order to poison Polixenes, deciding instead to flee Sicily and enter the Bohemian king's service.

Paulina - A noblewoman of Sicily. Paulina is fierce in her defence of Hermione's virtue and unrelenting in her condemnation of Leontes after Hermione's death.

Autolycus - A rogiush peddler, vagabond, and pickpocket. He assists in Perdita and Florizel's escape when the elope.

The Sheperd - An old and honorable sheep tender. He finds Perdita as a baby and raises her as his own daughter.

The Clown - (or Yokel; a derogatory name for an unsophisticated person from the country). The sheperd's buffoonish son and Perdita's adopted brother.

Mamillius - Leontes and Hermione's son, the young prince of Sicilia. He dies, perhaps of grief, after his mother, Hermione, is wrongly imprisoned by his father, Leontes.

Cleomenes - A lord of Sicila, sent to Delphi to ask the oracle about Hermione's guilt.

Dion - A Sicilian lord who accompanies Cleomenes to Delphi.

Emilia - One of Hermione's ladies in-waiting.

Archidamus - A lord of Bohemia.

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