SOURCE: Cutts, John P. “Boy Eternal.” In Rich and Strange: A Study of Shakespeare's Last Plays, pp. 54-83. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1968.

In the following essay, Cutts focuses on the issue of Leontes's jealousy, contending that the “boy eternal” complex from which Leontes suffers explains the apparently sudden onset of his jealousy, bridges the supposed division between the play's first three acts and the fourth act, and is further exploited in the theme of “re-wooing” in the fifth act.

Criticism of The Winter's Tale concerns itself sooner or later with the inception of Leontes' jealousy, about which there has been great conflict of opinion. Most modern critics support the view that Leontes shows jealousy from the very beginning of the play and carefully document this.¹ But Pafford, in the New Arden Shakespeare edition of the play, reverts to an older school of criticism which found no indication...