SOURCE: "Time and Presence in The Winter's Tale" in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4, December, 1985, pp. 347-67.

In the following essay, Garner analyzes The Winter's Tale in terms of two temporal aspects—the change and consequences of time, and the moment unaffected by it—and extends his discussion to the interpenetration of these aspects during the statue scene.

Literally as well as figuratively, Time stands at the center of The Winter's Tale, giving strikingly emblematic stage life to a theme that had resonated in Shakespeare's imagination since the sonnets and the earliest plays, through the often turbulent drama of the playwright's middle years, and into the romances, those strangely fabulous works that play variations on all that came before. The confusions of Syracuse and Illyria sort themselves out in the movements of time; Richard of Gloucester and Macbeth draw back to seize time's promise; an aging poet reminds...