The Winter's Tale - Imagery of Nature

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  • Nature – both positive and negative. Some stand-out examples are Perdita’s catalogues of flowers and her debate with Polixenes regarding nature and art, the latter noting that ‘that art/ Which you say adds to nature, is an art/ That nature makes’ (IV.4.90-2).
  • Paulina claims that the ‘great goddess Nature’ has made the new baby resemble her father (II.3.57), and Perdita too alludes to ‘great creating nature’ (IV.4.88).
  • Leontes notes he and Polixenes were regarded ‘as like as eggs’ (I.2.209), a symbol of regeneration and birth; yet he also uses the same image in asking his son ‘Will you take eggs for money?’ in the same scene.
  • ‘Eggs for money’ was an expression born of the abundance and cheapness

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