The prince provides “hope…that, indeed, physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh,” presumably because he represents a “promise” that their beloved country will flourish after their own deaths (1.1.35-39). The apparently arbitrary introduction of the subject of Leontes’ son, Mamillius, at this point is more pertinent than it seems, for, although Archidamus claims that nothing “in the world” could ever “alter” the attachment between the two kings, he knows in reality that love can only be “continue” in some sense after death through the “unspeakable comfort” of children (1.1.31-35). This conversation highlights both the strength of the drive to establish and maintain intimate attachments and the painstaking, equitable “interchange” of care that it entails. Though absent shook hands, as over a vast and embrac’d as it were from the ends

Interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies, that they have seem’d to be together, So assiduously has the two kings’ early “affection” been sustained through a constant Camillo underlines the significance of this casual remark when he reassures Archidamus that the “rooted” attachment between the two kings, formed when “they were train’d together in their childhoods,” obviates any need for Polixenes to repay the “magnificen” hospitality which he has enjoyed in Sicily (1.1.17-24). Archidamus admits that were Leontes to return Polixenes’ visit to Syria, as is expected, the relative poverty of the hospitality that Bohemia would be able to offer him could be “justified in loves” (1.1.1-16). As is his habit, Shakespeare obliquely introduces his overall theme in the opening scene of The Winter’s Tale.

HiBit Uninstaller 3.1.62 instaling