Perhaps I ought to add, touching the forecited anachronisms, that the Poet’s sense of them may be fairly regarded as apparent in the naming of the piece.  He seems to have judged that, in a dramatic tale intended for the delight of the fireside during a long, quiet Winter’s evening, such things would not be out of place, and would rather help than mar the entertainment and life of the performance.  Thus much indeed is plainly hinted more than once in the course of the play; as in Act v. scene 2, where, one of the Gentlemen being asked, “What became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?” he replies, “Like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep, and not an ear open.”

Much the same is to be said touching the remarkable freedom which the Poet here takes with the conditions of time; there being an interval of sixteen years between the third and fourth Acts, which is with rather un-Shakespearian awkwardness bridged over by the Chorus introducing Act iv.  This freedom, however, was inseparable from the governing idea of the piece, nor can it be faulted but upon such grounds as would exclude all dramatized fiction from the stage.  It is to be noted also that while the play thus divides itself into two parts, these are skilfully woven together by a happy stroke of art.  The last scene of the third Act not only finishes the action of the first three, but by an apt and unforced transition begins that of the other two; the two parts of the drama being smoothly drawn into the unity of a continuous whole by the introduction of the old Shepherd and his son at the close of the one and the opening of the other.  This natural arrangement saves the imagination from being disturbed by any yawning or obtrusive gap of time, notwithstanding the lapse of so many years in the interval.  On this point, Gervinus remarks that, “while Shakespeare has in other dramas permitted a twofold action united by a common idea, he could not in this instance have entirely concentrated the two fictions; he could but unite them indistinctly by a leading idea in both; though the manner in which he has outwardly united them is a delicate and spirited piece of art.”

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In the delineation of Leontes there is an abruptness of change which strikes us, at first view, as not a little a-clash with nature:  we cannot well see how one state of mind grows out of another:  his jealousy shoots in comet-like, as something unprovided for in the general ordering of his character.  Which causes this feature to appear as if it were suggested rather by the exigencies of the stage than by the natural workings of human passion.  And herein the Poet seems at variance with himself; his usual method being to unfold a passion in its rise and progress, so that we go along with it freely from its origin to its consummation.  And, certainly, there is no accounting for Leontes’ conduct, but by supposing a predisposition to jealousy in him, which, however, has been hitherto kept latent by his wife’s clear, firm, serene discreetness, but which breaks out into sudden and frightful activity as soon as she, under a special pressure of motives, slightly overacts the confidence of friendship.  There needed but a spark of occasion to set this secret magazine of passion all a-blaze.