SOURCE: Kiefer, Frederick. “The Iconography of Time in The Winter's Tale.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme 23, no. 3 (summer 1999): 49-64.

In the following excerpt, Kiefer emphasizes Time's restorative powers as well as its destructive ones in The Winter's Tale. Time's dual nature, the critic suggests, is symbolized by the hourglass he carries, for its inversion signals a dramatic movement from catastrophe to consolation.

Probably no personification was more familiar to Jacobean playgoers than the figure whom Shakespeare brings to the stage in The Winter's Tale: Time. His presence is in keeping with the special attention Shakespeare gives to visual effects in the late plays, when he increasingly creates characters out of mythological figures, and when his company has available the resources of the indoor Blackfriars theater as well as the Globe. Father Time is not unfamiliar to modern audiences accustomed to seeing his image at New Year's celebrations...