The Winter’s Tale · Chapter
Scene I explained
Time, as the Chorus, addresses the audience, announcing a leap of sixteen years.
What happens
Time, as the Chorus, addresses the audience, announcing a leap of sixteen years. He explains his power to overturn custom and law, and sets the scene in Bohemia, introducing Florizel as the king's son and Perdita as a shepherd's daughter, now grown in grace.
Themes in this chapter
Time and Transformation
Time personified speaks of his power to slide over sixteen years, planting and overwhelming custom, emphasizing transformation and the passage of time.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror / Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error, / Now take upon me, in the name of Time, / To use my wings.”
Time, who brings pleasure to some and tests everyone, who creates and reveals mistakes, now assumes the role of Time and uses my wings.
Time introduces himself and his power over human affairs.
“I turn my glass and give my scene such growing / As you had slept between: Leontes leaving, / The effects of his fond jealousies so grieving / That he shuts up himself, imagine me, / Gentle spectators, that I now may be / In fair Bohemia;”
I turn my hourglass and advance the scene as if you had slept through the interval: Leontes is left behind, grieving from his jealousies so much that he isolates himself, and now imagine, gentle audience, that I am in beautiful Bohemia.
Time transitions the story from Sicilia to Bohemia, skipping sixteen years.