EPIGRAPH

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.

—Winter’s Tale [Act IV, Scene 4]

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SONG OF SPRING, Love’s Labour’s Lost [Act V, sc. 2]