The debate between Perdita and Polixenes over the merits of beautiful but unnaturally crossed flowers condenses Shakespeare's discussion of man-made art and nature created by God (represented by the physical and ecological nature as well as the human nature of the characters). Their arguments challenge the effectiveness of art as reexpression, renewal, and creation of truth. The conflicting ideas that art is futile because it is an imperfect imitation of nature, and that art is sublime because it improves on nature's flaws using divine creative abilities dominate The Winter's Tale. However, the play's joyous climax suggests that art and nature have equal value because together they achieve "natural order", regeneration and, ultimately, balance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay Polixenes argues that art is the imaginative power of man, the ability to “repair nature” and perfect it (4.4.96). Through art, men can “design” things better than nature by “marrying a gentler offspring to the wilder stock,” thus calling into question God’s exclusive ability to create (4.4.92-4 ). As a playwright, Shakespeare is like a god capable of manipulating the seasons, personalities, and destiny in the fictional universe he created. He can idealize life and ignore nature to model time, place and emotion; to hasten his story, he makes Time malleable, and orders 16 years old to disappear. The structure of his “staged world” emphasizes higher truths in a way that “chaotic” nature never could. For example, Antigone's brutal death is both a judgment on her inability to defy Leontes' madness and a remark on the erratic and violent whims of nature. The characters' creations serve a more immediate artistic purpose than Shakespeare's vast ambitions to enlighten the audience about reality. For example, the festival ballads and dances exist primarily to artificially enrich the pleasures of nature and to rejoice the natures of the guests by making them "red with mirth" (4.4.53-4). Even Perdita testifies that her costume “changes [her] character” (4.4.134). In fact, its disguise gives art another purpose beyond revealing the truth and creating mirth. Art can conceal and mask imperfect nature through impersonation; by creating new identities, masqueraders usurp their natural and imperfect images as well as God's right to create them. Polixenes, Florizel and Camillo, born nobles, abandon their duties linked to their natural heritage by hiding like crude farmers. Meanwhile, Perdita is disguised as a shepherdess disguised as the goddess Flora. This ability to disguise and change oneself is a divine, Protean, and Mercurian facility and is used by Jupiter, Neptune, and Apollo, who "took upon themselves the forms of beasts." Thanks to the divine ability to "change shape", the characters' "enhanced" identities can pass as natural. However, all the costumes eventually come off. These deceptive abilities also obscure the truth of nature and highlight the impermanence of art. Perdita insists that art's capacity to teach, entertain, and disguise serves only superficial and ephemeral purposes. She scornfully calls the superficially beautiful hybrid flowers "nature's bastards" (4.4.83), as if she knows that, even without special education, her own pure and pure natureroyal makes her “too noble for this place” (4.4.158). . She declares that only flowers timely and formed by God are accepted into her natural “rustic garden” (4.4.83). In the end, art at its best is only "living and mocked life", a stagnant and temporary imitation of the endlessly living Nature, which, like an elitist snob, devotes itself to purity and endurance of his offspring (5.3.19). Women can only hide their true faces temporarily “when they were painted” (4.4.101). Men create statues, immortal in stone, but they are always inferior because they have no “eternity” and cannot “put breath into [their] work” (5.2.98). Art is a vain attempt to claim divine creative powers, for even the sculptor of the most exact likeness cannot reproduce the passions of life, the tailor of the most convincing costume cannot chip away at the birthright of the person who wears it, and the playwright of the most realistic play cannot reproduce everything. of the subtleties, patterns and balances of human interaction. Art is often applied irresponsibly or abnormally; men abuse it because it is not eternal, nor always created with the best intentions. Atolycus pursues art for selfish reasons, trading the idealism of art and character to those who “pay them well” (4.4.314). His art is a debased “deception” (4.4.598); compared to the romantic concept of statues melting into women, his songs pervert virgins who are "turned into cold fish" (4.4.279). He mocks meaningful artistic creation; performing behind the costumes of courtiers and minstrels, he sings hollow, naive ballads while using his actor's versatility to pickpocket and lie to his audience. “Although [he] is not naturally honest,” art gives him the means and framework to put his dishonesty into practice (4.4.712). The artificiality of art can also exploit men's senses and cloud their judgment. Leontes' irrationality stems from the insecurities generated by his artificial confinement. He lives in a cold, structured courtyard, never sees the greenery of nature, and can only remember freedom, innocence, and “searching in the sun” (1.2.66). As a result, he relies on familiar, self-made things to assuage his distrust. Leontes reassures himself by studying his own creation: his son. He mentally reproduces Mamillius as a "copy of [his image]", a perfect artistic imitation born artificially from his mind, as unnatural as Polixenes' imperfect and independent son is not (1.2.122). With the pride of the gods who also created kingdoms, laws and children with their heads, despite his very human prejudices, he regularly evokes the truth as the omnipotence of Nature. Like a reckless playwright, he creates a disordered reality in which Hermione is incontestably guilty and he alone can bring out “the truth of this,” like “the great Apollo” (3.2.200-1). Ironically, even as his irreverent delusions of God destroy his true wife and natural heir, he mocks his rational overlords, claiming that their "ignorant credulity will not arrive at the truth" (2.1.192). Art and unnatural ambitions cannot overcome the force of nature's well-established patterns, for art is accessible to any unworthy or unprepared person, and is vulnerable to disorder and falsity. Although he debates the supremacy of art or nature, Shakespeare's view is that the two are closely related. because “art itself is Nature” (4.4.97). Their value does not lie in how they" (5.2.154-7).