''Nature's Bastards" and Painted Maids: Artifice in Shakespeare's Romances

Abstract

In The Winter's Tale, Perdita debates with Polixenes the role of art and nature in reference to gillyflowers or multicolored carnations, believed to be the result of cross-breeding with other flowers. Perdita declares that such cross-bred flowers are "nature's bastards" and that

...Of a kind

Our rustic garden's barren, and I care not

To get slips of them. (4.4.83-85)¹