The Botany of Shakespeare 227 



i t 



What fools we mortals be!" For sheer superstition 

 and crass stupidity who may say that the nineteenth cen- 

 tury may not yet discount the days of the Virgin Queen ? 

 But I said at the outset that Shakespeare had in some 

 instances anticipated modern scientific teaching. To il- 

 lustrate this in its most striking instance, I am compelled 

 to offer a somewhat long quotation : 



' ' POLIXENES. Shepherdess, 



A fair one are you, well you fit our ages 

 With flowers of winter. 



PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient, 



Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth 

 Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season 

 Are our carnation and streaked gillyvors, 

 Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind 

 Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not 

 To get slips of them. 



POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 



Do you neglect them? 



PERDITA. For I have heard it said 



There is an art which in their piedness shares 

 With great creating nature. 



POLIXENES. Say there be; 



Yet nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature makes that mean; so, over 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 

 The art itself is nature. 



PERDITA. So it is. 



POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors, 



And do not call them bastards." 



A Winter's Tale, iv: iv, 76-98. 



