Act 4, Scene 1

[Enter Time, as Chorus.]
Time
1552 I,—that please some, try all; both joy and terror
1553 Of good and bad; that make and unfold error,—
1554 Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
1555 To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
1556 To me or my swift passage, that I slide
1557 O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
1558 Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
1559 To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour
1560 To plant and o'erwhelm custom. Let me pass
1561 The same I am, ere ancient'st order was
1562 Or what is now received: I witness to
1563 The times that brought them in; so shall I do
1564 To the freshest things now reigning, and make stale
1565 The glistering of this present, as my tale
1566 Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,
1567 I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing
1568 As you had slept between. Leontes leaving
1569 The effects of his fond jealousies, so grieving
1570 That he shuts up himself; imagine me,
1571 Gentle spectators, that I now may be
1572 In fair Bohemia; and remember well,
1573 I mention'd a son o' the king's, which Florizel
1574 I now name to you; and with speed so pace
1575 To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace
1576 Equal with wondering: what of her ensues,
1577 I list not prophesy; but let Time's news
1578 Be known when 'tis brought forth:—a shepherd's daughter,
1579 And what to her adheres, which follows after,
1580 Is the argument of Time. Of this allow,
1581 If ever you have spent time worse ere now;
1582 If never, yet that Time himself doth say
1583 He wishes earnestly you never may.
[Exit.]

Notes

TLN 1552rhetorical device
“please some, try all; both joy and terror”
Time opens by claiming two opposing powers: it pleases (brings joy, abundance, new beginnings) and it tries (tests, afflicts — the same root as 'trial'). The paired antithesis — joy / terror, make / unfold — frames the whole speech and signals that the sixteen-year gap holds both kinds of change. 'Unfold error' means expose or undo wrongdoing: the word 'unfold' carries the sense of a story being opened out, forecasting the revelations of Act 5.
TLN 1559archaic vocab
“in one self-born hour To plant and o'erwhelm custom”
'Self-born' means self-generated or self-originating — Time was not made by any law or custom; it existed before any human institution and made itself. 'Plant and o'erwhelm custom' means to establish new ways and then destroy them: Time sets up conventions ('plants' them) and then levels them ('o'erwhelms' = overturns, buries under). The claim is Time's justification for jumping sixteen years mid-play: no rule of drama or of nature can bind it.
TLN 1567cultural context
“I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing As you had slept between”
Time performs the sixteen-year leap by turning his hourglass — the sand running the other way marks a new count. The hourglass was the defining prop of personified Time in Elizabethan iconography, familiar from emblems, paintings, tomb carvings, and the memento mori tradition. 'As you had slept between' is an instruction to the audience: imagine yourselves waking after a sixteen-year sleep and accept what has changed. The theatrical effect is the same as a Chorus's bridging narration in classical drama, and Time uses the device explicitly.