ches that help the lame are but an incumbrance to the whole.

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."

* * * * *

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