The Healing Power of Art in The Winter’s Tale

The debate of art versus nature is pervasive. Art is understood to be the act of human intervention by means of cognition and imagination to alter what nature has already created. The question at hand is: can and should art be used as means of perfecting nature? It is generally asserted that nature is superior to art. This is an unfair assumption. In The Winter’s Tale, the debate between art and nature is palpable. The two countries, Bohemia and Sicilia can be used to represent the two opposing ideas. The first setting of the play, Sicilia, or the court, represents art and artifice. The court follows rules and structures established by human intervention. After Act III, the story is transported to a pastoral setting in the countryside of Bohemia, removing all the “unnatural” influences of man. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare crafts a powerful argument for art as a redemptive force, while highlighting undeniable flaws of nature.

The exchange between Perdita and Polixenes in Act IV, scene iv provides a concise summary of the conflicting views on the relationship between art and nature. It serves as a basis from which Shakespeare and the audience can examine art’s utility. Perdita is the quintessence of aesthetics and grace, representing nature in the debate. Polixenes, on the other hand, is disguised as someone else. He employs human intervention, art, in order to conceal his identity. Perdita rejects all cosmetics and art because she believes it is wrong to conceal or alter what is natural. She refuses to plant “carnations and streaked gillyvors” in her garden, referring to them as “nature’s bastards” because they are a hybrid breed of flower created by human intervention (IV.iv). She says to Polixenes: “I have heard it said/...

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...e of Bohemia. After enough time passes, and with the influence of Camillo, Paulina and others, the problems of the play begin to clear up, culminating with the resurrection of Hermione (V.iii). Time proves its remedial powers to be supernatural.

It seems then that art is needed to bring about the happy ending of the play. Again, Shakespeare does not intend to imply that art is superior to nature, or visa versa. Rather, he presents and supports the importance and necessity of art in society. The absence of such intervention, or rather the return to a state of nature, would prove unsuccessful and chaotic. As Polixenes offered to Perdita, art itself is natural. It is an incredible, even supernatural, ability that humans have been graced with. The Winter’s Tale suggests that there must be some balance between nature and our ability and choice to shape it.