 |
| From BYU's production |
At the beginning of Act IV, our last stretch of reading for tomorrow, we are introduced to "Time". Time is a character, and a thing, and serves as a chorus. When I saw The Winter's Tale at BYU, and again when I read it for this class, I wondered why time was being brought into the play as a character. In the very first scene of the play we see two of the background characters introducing the setting; so why did Shakespeare not do that again? What could be his purpose in using Time in this interlude?
I looked into the character, and surprisingly much of the scholarship I found on the matter stated quite plainly that Time was being used a simple bridge, to mark the passing of years (something frowned upon for plays at that time). One more recent article that I found though gave perhaps a different explanation for Time, focusing not on the character, but on the hourglass.
"More significant to an interpretation of this passage, it should be noted that one representation of the hourglass in Renaissance art, as Guy de Tervarent has shown, was an attribute of Youth or Age, depending on whether the superior part of the glass was empty or full. Thus one can surmise that one reason for Time's turning his hourglass is to show the upper part full and hence a potential for growth-life renewed; but also this action indicates that his concern now will be with Youth (Florizel and Perdita) and spring, while the grief-ravaged and aging Leontes must yet for a time endure the winter of his discontent" Raymond J. Rundus, "Time and His Glass in the Winter's Tale". Article
With this in mind, the setting becomes all the more interesting, as does the extreme shift in the mood of the play. It does feel like two different plays, and through Time flipping his hourglass, Shakespeare symbolically flips the world, time, and the mood.
Wow, that is really cool - I mean, that is exactly what happens: a complete reversal
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was interesting that he used a character to represent time. It made me think of my British literature class where we talked about different plays from the medieval period, specifically the morality play. One good example of this type of play is called "Everyman" and in it, the characters include: God, Death, Everyman, Good-Deeds, Angel, Knowledge, Beauty, Discretion, and Strength. These characters are called that and they act the role in order to lead the main character or every man down the right path. This is so that the audience can get a good moral out of the story. So with this Time character, I feel like Shakespeare was somewhat following that similar tradition.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting character. I remember reading Samuel Johnson's critique of Shakespeare's works, and one thing that he tried to explain was Shakespeare ability to jump around through different times and years. It was considered bad form to jump too far forward or jump from one location to another, because they felt that would make the audience feel disbelief at the play. I feel like Shakespeare puts in this character, partly because this time leap is huge even for him and he wanted a way to explain it in a plausible way to his critics.
ReplyDelete