SOURCE: Quinones, Ricardo J. “Views of Time in Shakespeare.” Journal of the History of Ideas 26, no. 3 (July-September 1965): 327-52.

In the following essay, Quinones identifies three principal concepts of time in Shakespeare's works: augmentative time, whose potentially destructive power may be averted; contracted time, whose corrosive effects are inevitably tragic; and extended time, which works in league with nature to bring about auspicious resolutions.

With Paul Elmer More one can say that “no single motive or theme recurs more persistently through the whole course of Shakespeare's works than [the] consciousness of the servile depredations of time.”¹ Yet, despite this recognition and more recent ones, there has been wanting a comprehensive and thorough examination of Shakespeare's dramatic uses of Time.² Even More's phrase “servile depredations” does little to suggest the wide range of Time's functions. This study is a summary exposition of my attempts to see the variety and general...