With great creating Nature.10 Polix. Say there be ; Yet Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean: so, even that art Which you say adds to Nature, is an art That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend Nature, change it rather; but Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors, And do not call them bastards. Per. I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; 12 No more than, were I painted, I would wish 10 It would seem that variegated gilliflowers were produced by crossbreeding of two or more varieties; as variegated ears of corn often grow from several sorts of corn being planted together. The gardener's art whereby this was done might properly be said to share with creating Nature. Douce says that "Perdita connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of these flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakespeare's time." 11 This identity of Nature and Art is thus affirmed by Sir Thomas Browne: "Nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they both being the servants of the Providence of God. Art is the perfection of nature were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God." 12 Perdita is too guileless to take the force of Polixenes' reasoning; she therefore assents to it, yet goes on to act as though there were nothing in it: her assent, indeed, is merely to get rid of the perplexity it causes her; for it clashes with and disturbs her moral feelings and associations.-Dibble was the name of an instrument for making holes in the ground to plant seeds or to set plants in. Desire to breed by me. Here's flowers for you; Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram ; The marigold, that goes to bed wi' th' Sun, Cam. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, Per. Out, alas ! You'd be so lean, that blasts of January Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair'st friend, I would I had some flowers o' the Spring that might Become your time of day ; and yours, and yours, That wear upon your virgin branches yet Your maidenhoods growing: - O Proserpina, That come before the swallow dares, and take 15 The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, 13 The marigold here meant is the sun-flower. Thus spoken of in Lupton's Notable Things: "Some call it Sponsus Solis, the Spowse of the Sunne, because it sleeps and is awakened with him." 14 "From Dis's wagon" means at the coming of Dis's wagon.. In Shakespeare's time wagon was often used where we should use chariot; its application not being confined to the coarse common vehicle now called by that name. So in Mercutio's description of Queen Mab: "Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat"; where later usage would require charioteer. The story how, at the approach of Dis in his chariot, Proserpine, affrighted, let fall from her lap the flowers she had gathered, is told in the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses; familiar to the Poet, no doubt, in Golding's translation, 1587. 15 To take here means to captivate, to entrance, or ravish with delight. We have a similar thought in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2: 'Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that the winds were love-sick with them." Or Cytherea's breath; 16 pale primroses, a malady Most incident to maids; bold oxlips 17 and The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack, Flo. What, like a corse? Per. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on; Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, But quick,18 and in mine arms. your - Come, take flowers: Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine Does change my disposition. Flo. What you do Still betters what is done.19 When you speak, sweet, 16 "The beauties of Greece and some Asiatic nations tinged their eyelids of an obscure violet colour by means of some unguent, which was doubtless perfumed like those for the hair, &c., mentioned by Athenæus. Of the beauty and propriety of the epithet violets dim, and the transition at once to the lids of Juno's eyes and Cytherea's breath, no reader of taste and feeling need be reminded." Such is the common explanation of the passage. But I suspect the sweetness of Juno's eyelids, as Shakespeare conceived them, was in the look, not in the odour. Much the same sweetness is ascribed to the sleeping Imogen's eyelids, in Cymbeline, ii. 2: “These windows-white and azure-laced with blue of heaven's own tinct."Probably violets are called dim, because their colour is soft and tender, not bold and striking. Or the epithet may have reference to the shyness of that flower; as in Wordsworth's well-known lines, "A violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye." 17 The epithet bold in this place is justified by Steevens, on the ground that "the oxlip has not a weak flexible stalk like the cowslip, but erects itself boldly in the face of the Sun. Wallis, in his History of Northumberland, says that the great oxlip grows a foot and a half high." 18 Quick in its original sense of living or alive, as in the Nicene Creed: "To judge both the quick and dead." 19 Surpasses what is done. So the Poet often uses to better. I'd have you do it ever: when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you So singular in each particular, Crowning what you have done i' the present deed, Per. O Doricles, Your praises are too large but that your youth, You woo'd me the false way. Flo. I think you have As little skill 21 to fear as I have purpose To put you to't.22 But, come; our dance, I pray : That never mean to part. Per. I'll swear for 'em. Polix. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems But smacks of something greater than herself, 20 The idea pervading this exquisite speech evidently is, that Perdita does every thing so charmingly, that her latest doing always seems the best. Thus each later deed of hers is aptly said to crown what went before; and all her acts are made queens in virtue of this coronation. 21 Skill was often used in the sense of cunning or knowledge; here it means reason, apparently, as Warburton explained it. So in Warner's Albions England, 1606: Our queen deceas'd conceal'd her heir, I wot not for what skill. 22" To put you to't" is to give you cause or occasion for it. Too noble for this place. Cam. He tells her something That makes her blood look out: 23 good sooth, she is Clo. Come on, strike up! Dor. Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic, To mend her kissing with! Мор. Now, in good time! Clo. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners. Come, strike up! [Music. A dance of Shepherds and Shepherdesses. Polix. Pray you, good shepherd, what fair swain is this Which dances with your daughter? Shep. They call him Doricles; and boasts himself To have a worthy feeding: 24 I but have it Upon his own report, and I believe it ; He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter: I think so too; for never gazed the Moon Upon the water, as he'll stand, and read, As 'twere, my daughter's eyes: and, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose Who loves another best. Polix. She dances featly. Shep. So she does any thing; though I report it, 23 Donne gives the sense of this very choicely in his Elegy on Mrs. Elizabeth Drury: We understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood 24 Worthy feeding has been rightly explained "a valuable tract of pasturage; such as might be a worthy offset to Perdita's dower." So in Drayton's Mooncalf: Finding the feeding, for which he had toil'd |