One further comment. Hunt implies that I ignore puns and wordplay, unquestionably prominent features of the play. It is curious that what he says about its multiple meanings is an abbreviated version of the explication included in my essay. I would agree if the claim is that puns together with the crossing or disordering of meanings they invite are understood to signify the instabilities, private and public, by which Leontes imagines himself threatened. My paper contends that the ambiguities that rattle the surface of his discourse are symptomatic of pressures leading him to adopt an absolutism that is reductive, unequivocal, and decisive.
Ambiguities put monarchy at risk, unmanage the manageable, disorder the instruments of order.
The bitter, accusatory wordplay that darkens the tenor of Leontes' discourse represents not only a disordering of language but of monarchical authority as well. It invades and corrupts the loftier reaches of discursive space. The various and conflictual ways in which wordplay is deployed throughout the play put additional strain on Hunt's argument about similar language use. Hermione's wordplay describes an openness, a range of possibilities, a discursive space with room to maneuver. Leontes' puns betray a bitterness, a sense of outrage, an anguished bewilderment and discord.