SOURCE: Hartwig, Joan. “The Tragicomic Perspective of The Winter's Tale.” ELH 37, no. 1 (March 1970): 12-36.

In the following essay, Hartwig proposes that in The Winter's Tale Shakespeare used a miraculous resolution to create a sense of dislocation and wonder in his audience, using Leontes's penitence and eventual recovery of Hermione as a way to stress the benevolence of the power that controls universe.

In The Winter's Tale, Leontes, confronted with the breathing statue which is Hermione, pleads to keep this moment which is penultimate to actual discovery. Paulina, aware of the intensity with which Leontes has responded to the apparent statue of Hermione, offers to draw the curtain.

PAUL.

                                                            I'll draw the curtain: 

My lord's almost so far transported that 

He'll think anon it lives. 

LEON.

                                                            O sweet Paulina, 

Make me to think so twenty years together! 

No settled senses of the world can match 

The pleasure of that...