In an exchange in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale between Perdita and Polixenes, the former has expressed a dislike for the gillyvor flower because they are not entirely “natural” (wild); they have been altered by man’s “art” and so are made less. Here is Polixenes response:
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.
-Julie
