SOURCE: "The Function of Structure in The Winter's Tale," in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, 1978, pp. 238-48.

In the essay below, Hieatt examines "the adherence of mortals to a standard of ideal behaviour" as the shaping principle which forms a coherent basis of the play's structural segments.

I

That The Winter's Tale presents an experimental, twopart structure has been generally agreed since the time of Thomas Price, a late Victorian critic who described the play as 'a genuine diptych', the first part of which is 'a tragedy and the second a comedy'.¹ On the other hand, opinion of the success of this structure has changed radically, the once maligned gap in time between Acts III and IV now being regarded as less a flaw than an index of Shakespeare's over-all design. Whereas Price found that 'in passing from part to part, the mind loses grasp of the...