Abstract

This article examines the horticultural lexicon used by Shakespeare to describe adoptive familial bonds. As an example of the ways in which early modern gardeners manipulated the natural world, the practice of grafting collapses any rigid distinction perceived to exist between nature and culture. It serves in All's Well That Ends Well as a metaphor for the combination of families, in which a child belonging genetically to one family is adopted by another. Shakespeare's use of the grafting metaphor suggests, within the context of the play, that legitimate families might be synthetically produced, or based on nonbiological ties.

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