Are our carnations, and streak'd gilliflowers," Pol. Do you neglect them? Per. Wherefore, gentle maiden, For I have heard it said, There is an art which in their piedness shares Pol. Say, there be; Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: Which does mend nature, 'The art itself is nature. This is an art change it rather; but Spelt gillyvors in the original, and probably so pronounced at the time. Mr. Dyce thinks it should be retained as "an old form of the word." Gelofer or gillofer was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweetwilliams; from the French girofle." Douce says, 7 For in the sense of because. H. 8 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 such flowers being artificially produced, "Perdita considers them a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman; and therefore declines to meddle with them. She 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." H. 9 This identity of nature and art is thus affirmed by Lord Bacon. "We are the rather induced to assign the History of Arts as a branch of Natural History, because an opinion hath long time gone current, as if art were some different thing from nature, and artificial from natural." Likewise Sir Thomas Browne: "Nature is not Pol. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers, And do not call them bastards. Per. I'll not put 10 The dibble in earth to set one slip of them : fore - Desire to breed by me. Here's flowers for you; The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, Per. Out, alas! You'd be so lean, that blasts of January Would blow you through and through. Now, my fairest 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 maidenheads growing: - O Proserpina, 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." H. 10 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. Mrs. Jameson says, "She gives up the argument, but, woman-like, retains her own opinion or rather her sense of right." H. 11 Some call it sponsus solis, the spowse of the sunne, because it sleeps and is awakened with him.". - Lupton's Notable Things For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall That come before the swallow dares, and take 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, and in mine arms. flowers: Come, take your Methinks, I play as I have seen them do 12 Coleridge says, “An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the aesthetic logic Perhaps golden was the word which would set off the violets dim.” The story how, at the coming of, Dis, Proserpine, affrighted, let fall from her lap the flowers which she had been gathering, is told in Ovid's Metam. lib. v. Of course, from Dis's waggon means from or because of the approach of Dis's waggon. H. 13 The beauties of Greece and other 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. Hence Hesiod's βλεφάρων κυκνεύων in a passage which has been rendered "Her flowing hair and sable eyelids Breathed enamouring odour, like the breath Of balmy Venus." Shakespeare may not have known this, yet 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 Flo. What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever: when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens. Per. O Doricles! Your praises are too large: but that your youth, And the true blood which fairly peeps through it, Do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd, With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, You woo'd me the false way. Flo. I think you have As little skill to fear, as I have purpose To put you to't. But come; our dance, I pray : Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair, That never mean to part. Per. I'll swear for 'em. Pol. 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; Too noble for this place. Cam. He tells her something, That makes her blood look out: 14 Good sooth, she is The queen of curds and cream. 14 This reminds us of some lines in Donne's Elegy on Mrs Elizabeth Drury: "We understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood 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. Pol. Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this Which dances with your daughter? Shep. They call him Doricles, and he boasts him self To have a worthy feeding; 15 but I 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 gaz'd 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. Pol. She dances featly. Shep. So she does any thing, though I report it, That should be silent. If young Doricles Do light upon her, she shall bring him that Which he not dreams of. Enter a Servant. Serv. O master! if you did but hear the pedler at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you'll tell money; he utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men's ears grew to his tunes. 15 A valuable tract of pasturage; such as might be a worthy offset to Perdita's dowry. |