310 Blog Post 2

The Winter’s Tale assumes a temporal setting of timelessness. There are no distinctive characteristics or historical hints suggesting in which era the events of this play would occur. The play could just as easily take place in Biblical times or modern times without this distinction interfering with the plot.  

Regardless of this timelessness, Time exists within the parameters of the play. Specifically, he is a character personification of the conceptual laws. Time appearing as a character is unprecedented prior to this play. So, why does Shakespeare write Time in as a character? Why does Time only have a written part in one scene? Why is he alone in this scene? What is his purpose in the play?

However, when attempting to answer these questions about Time, I find I’m asking more questions than I am answering. These are the questions I’ve toyed with so far:

How would this monologue be staged? 

As I imagine, Act four, scene one Time stands center stage delivering his monologue. When the monologue ends, he exits. There are no other characters onstage with Time at any point in the monologue. 

What does Time’s monologue structurally do to the play?

In the script, the monologue structurally separates the play into two nearly-self-sufficient parts. Acts one through three could exist as an independent tragedy. While act four— save for TIme’s scene— and act five could exist as an independent comedy. Yet, both these parts exist within a larger work because the first part establishes how the Sicilian heir was lost and the need for her to be found, and the second part establishes if Sicily find her lost heir (she does). The later part (acts four and five) occurs sixteen years after its corresponding part, with few, if any, events occurring in this duration which would bring the plot to resolution. 

Time’s monologue mimics this passage of time by creating an interruption in the plot. This interruption occurs in the opening scene of act four, which in a five act structure is conventionally the first scene after the intermission. If the play is performed this way, the intermission would be a passage of time separating the two parts, which Time captures in his monologue.

What is Time’s function as a character in the play? 

In his monologue, Time announces matter-of-factly that it is “I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error” (A4, s3). Time presents his power in a tyrannical over everyone, including our characters and our experience as audience members. Time’s presence, once explicitly revealed as character, becomes an unavoidable participant in the play. Even when off-stage, the characters are subject to Time and his laws as their need to find the heir is marked by a deadline; with the Queen and son gone, the deadline is the King’s death.  

However, Time does not take the stage in order to use his absolute authority to reverse time to when Sicily had an heir. Rather he fast-forwards toward the deadline. Time continues in the imperative: “impute it not a crime” that his presence notes the “swift passage” of the sixteen years the play ignores (A4, s3). His demand holds an authoritarian tone while ironically addressing the audience as if a passive messenger. Time paraphrases the events which occur in these skipped sixteen years, as if to say see, nothing happened, I am not making things worse. Yet, although not furthering the conflict, TIme’s action heightens the tension by bringing the characters closer to their deadline.

He seeks no approval for his actions. Instead, he justifies his actions by being Time. He announces that “it is in [his] power to o’verthrow law” and to “o’erwhelm custom” (A4, s3). The law which he mentions is the "law" of time, which Time himself would have created and ruled by. The "custom" he refers to is the precedent that all play plots occurs in the duration of about a day— not decades. Time as a character is aware of how unconventional his presence is, yet he interrupts, unyielding in his decision to skip sixteen years despite the challenges it poses on the conflict. 

With the unprecedented interruptions and everyone subject to his absolute law, is Time the ultimate tyrant of the work? After all, the first part of the work is a tragedy because Leontes ran out of time before he realized his wife's fidelity; therefore he was unable to amend his accusations to save his firstborn son and Queen. However, if Time is willing to interrupt right after this, what stopped him from intervening before the conflict reached this point? Similarly, the second part is a comedy because resolution is found before the deadline. However, is this the characters winning a race with Time? If so, is Tim the antagonist of the work? Or was Time's function simply to make the plot more bearable by skipping what would be exceptionally slow and time-consuming to cover, and his establishment of power a sort of ego trip?