Beyond Tyranny: Ethical Imagination, Erotic Education, and Justice in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

In the tragic action of The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare portrays Leontes as a madman whose mind has been wildly inflamed by jealousy. His madness, wrought by his imagination, confirms him as a jealous tyrant. Shakespeare’s political wisdom charts the path Leontes travels from jealousy and tragic injustice to comic reconciliation and justice. A study of classical and early modern concepts of tyranny reveals the corruption jealousy wreaks on the soul and prepares the way for Shakespeare in his play to show how a tyrannical ruler may be transported beyond tyranny by the grace of love. The Winter’s Tale thus presents the possibility of redemption in terms of the enchanting power of the ethical imagination and its appeals to love in order to reorient the misguided erotic soul of the tyrant back towards justice.