Nature and Nurture

Abstract

The central theme of the final plays is the conflict of nature and art. It is a conflict which in Shakespeare’s analysis is productive of the most significant and meaningful insights into life. From the rejection of the unnatural and the artificial in Pericles, through the contrast of country and court in Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, to the confrontation of nature and nurture in The Tempest, Shakespeare expands the topic which has been the subject of exhaustive analysis in King Lear. The development in the romances, however, is towards a more objective philosophical analysis of the ethical issues involved. The long discussion between Polixenes and Perdita in the sheep-shearing scene of The Winter’s Tale concludes with the paradox that ‘art is nature’ since ‘nature is made better by no mean / But nature makes that mean’ [IV iv 89–90]: an argument which is to be extended further in The Tempest.