SOURCE: “‘Verily Bearing Blood’: Pornography, Sexual Love, and the Reclaimed Feminine in The Winter's Tale,” in Essays in Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, November, 1990, pp. 61-81.

In the following essay, McCandless posits that Leontes's persecution of Hermione represents his attempt to cast away his source of sexual shame.

Early in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Polixenes recalls the boyhood paradise he shared with Leontes and attributes its end to the intrusion of “blood”—here a synonym for man's “sensual, animal appetite” (OED 1: 929).

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun, And bleat the one at th’ other. What we chang’d Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d That any did. Had we pursu’d 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...