SOURCE: "When Does the Tragi-Comic Disruption Start?: The Winter's Tale and Leontes' 'Affection'," in English Studies, Vol. 70, No. 2, April, 1989, pp. 225-32.

In the essay below, Wright argues that the contro versy surrounding the beginning of Leontes' jealousy overshadows Shakespeare's own dramatic emphasis of the collapse of Leontes' rational nature.

In most accounts of The Winter's Tale, the question of when the tragi-comic disruption starts has generally been taken as synonymous with 'When does Leontes become jealous?'. The assumption may blur an interpretative crux of some importance and one which is actually signalled in the text.

Leontes's jealousy, which initiates The Winter's Tale's tragi-comic cycle, has proved a perennial problem for the critics mainly on account of its suddenness. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch reached the notorious conclusion that 'Shakespeare had time, or could have found time, to make Leontes's jealousy far more credible than it is. I maintain that...