S2: Leonties and Hermione council with Polixenes to convince him to stay a while longer in Sicilia. Hermione tells him that he can either stay as a guest or as a prisoner--he can choose.
~ Polixenes consents to stay.
~ Leonties then begins to question Polixenes motives. He accuses Polixenes of cheating with his wife. He questions his son, asking him if he is really his son and then finally commanding in Camillo his suspicions and the charge to murder Polixenes.
~ Camillo defies the king at first and then agrees to poison Polixenes only if Leonties will then take Hermione as if nothing happened.
~ Leonties agrees that this was his plan all along.
I think one theme that Shakespear continually uses is the idea that things are not always as they appear. The idea that one's view or perception of things is not always correct. Here we have Leonties accusing Polixenes of cheating with his wife, he states that the offense is in sight, use a looking glass to get the details or just use one's plain eye and the truth will be seen. Polixenes also uses this idea to confirm Camillo's words and settle on a course of action.
Leontes condemning Camiollo for not seeing the truth:
Leontes. Ha' not you seen, Camillo,—
But that's past doubt, you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold's horn,—or heard,—
For to a vision so apparent rumour
Cannot be mute,—or thought,—for cogitation
Resides not in that man that does not think,—
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess,
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought, then say
My wife's a hobby-horse, deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench that puts to
Before her troth-plight: say't and justify't.
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?—a note infallible
Of breaking honesty—horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing.
I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer, that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer, that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Camillo. Who does infect her?
Leontes. Why, he that wears her like a medal, hanging
About his neck, Bohemia: who, if I
Had servants true about me, that bare eyes
To see alike mine honour as their profits,...
Polixenes then is convinced of Camillo's warning of the king's desires because of what he saw in the kings countenance:
Polixenes. I do believe thee:
I saw his heart in 's face.
Yet Shakespear shows us that Leonties couldn't have been more wrong the situation was indeed different than Leonties perceived it to be.
Another fascinating element that Shakespears uses in this play and act is the personification of the idea of treachery(cheating). He calls the idea of cheating with the Hermione a disease.
There is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
I cannot name the disease; and it is caught
Of you that yet are well.
A sickness caught of me, and yet I well!
What incidency thou dost guess of harm
Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near;
Which way to be prevented, if to be;
If not, how best to bear it.
This personification lends well to vial feeling of the accusation and of the evil subtly of it. It is something that one cannot prevent but once caught affects oneself and those around one. All of these things are conveyed in simple referring to cheating as a disease.
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