What is Shakespeare saying here?

[angryTurtle]

Hello

I am writing to ask for views on exactly what Shakespeare is saying here. The quote is from The Winter's Tale:

Polixenes:

Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, ev'n that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes

The reason I am asking is that Coleridge, who had a thing or two to say about Shakespeare, maintains that what Shakespeare is saying is that art comes before nature, that our perception of nature is somehow determined by how we perceive it artistically.

Is Shakespeare not, in fact, saying precisely the opposite? To me Shakespeare seems to be saying that nature has 'the final say', so to speak. That is, whatever art adds to nature - in painting, literature, etc - is itself
a product of nature. That is, remove the external world and there is no imagination. That's how I'm reading it.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Steve

[kelby_lake]

i agree with you steve

[angryTurtle]

I'm glad I'm not the only one!!

Steve

[shakespeare87]

I don't know - but try getting Shakespeare on the Double from your local bookstore or library - that will help.

[gerald albers]

Perdita has offered Prolixenes flowers, but says because it is autumn only carnations and gillivors are left. Since gillivors are a hybrid she has none in her garden. Her reason being they are not natural, but cross-bred. Prolixenes says that there is no mean (your text footnotes should explain the word is "means" - a way of doing something) for doing that but nature's. If gillivors are not made by nature, but by art, they are still nature's, because hybrids are created by "natural" means.

Predita rejects that argument by saying she would not want to be loved because she had added to her "natural" beauty by the "art" of cosmetics.

But the reason Shakespeare included this exchange is that he was setting up another of his wonderful illustrations of man's inconsistancy. Prolixenes says that we graft a "a gentler scion" - a shoot of domestic plant - to "wildest stock" - a plant not found in gardens - so that "the baser" - the wild plant - produces a bud - a new flower.

This he says does not "mend" nature, but merely "changes" it by using the "natural" - innate possiblity - to do so. And then urges Perdita to plant gillivors, and not to call then bastards.

Then a few minutes later this so reasonable man threatens his son - a gentle scion, i.e. a gentleman - with dis-inheritence, and Perdita - a baser bark, i.e. a commoner - with death, for proposing to do precisely what he had just argued.

This is acommon theme in Shakespeare, a loving father transformed into a raving tyrant if a daughter refuses to marry as he wishes. Witness Capulet, for whom Juliet is his all, threatening to leave her starve in the streets if she rejects Paris. Or Egeus and Hermina in Midsummer Night's Dream.

This is "as plain as the way to church." I think Coloridge missed the boat by trying to be too profound.

Let me know what you think.