Leontes

Abstract

The chief differences in the presentation of Leontes centred on the manner in which his jealousy arose. Barrie Ingham, in the 1969 Nunn production, enacted ‘the demented breakdown of the schizophrenic’ (Gordon Parso, Morning Star, 17 May 1969). Motivation and genesis were by-passed in a brilliant piece of directorial inventiveness which involved the use of stroboscopic lighting. The playful happiness of the nursery world was suddenly suspended as the light changed to a sinister, flickering blueness, conveying the subjective distortion created by Leontes’ ‘diseased opinion’. Passages such as his soliloquies at i ii 108–19 and 137–46 were thus isolated from the normal flow of action and thrillingly perceived by the audience as an eruptive violation of the state of innocence, with the stage action becoming essentially a psychological projection of Leontes’ state of mind. This effect was further heightened by temporary freezing of the other players and, as at i ii 180–5, a change to miming which indicated the sexual intimacy imagined by Leontes as taking place between Polixenes and Hermione. Ingham also accentuated his lines so as to convey Leontes’ distorted consciousness.