SOURCE: "Recasting Jealousy: A Reading of The Winter's Tale," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1 & 2, 1990, pp. 50-77.

In the following essay, Ronk investigates the psychological transformation of Leontes from a state of intense jealousy to one of penitence in The Winter's Tale.

In the middle of The Winter's Tale the character Time announces that Leontes disappears for sixteen years, only a piece of an evening in stage time, but symbolically crucial for positing the opportunity for change, for turning tragedy to romance, destructive obsession to grace. As in so many other Shakespeare plays, obliteration—here not just metaphorical but of an actual figure on stage—argues for possibility. Leontes takes on years of penance, following Paulina's prescribed routine, and finally, although she says otherwise here, moves the gods to forgive him:

Therefore betake thee
 To nothing but despair. A thousand knees,
 Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting...