The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 1

The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare.

by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Since the publication of the First Edition I have received many kind criticisms both from the public critics and from private friends. For these criticisms I am very thankful, and they have enabled me to correct some errors and to make some additions, which I hope will make the book more acceptable and useful.

For convenience of reference I have added the line numbers to the pa.s.sages quoted, taking both the quotations and the line numbers from the Globe Shakespeare. In a few instances I have not kept exactly to the text of the Globe Edition, but these are noted; and I have added the "Two n.o.ble Kinsmen," which is not in that Edition.

In other respects this Second Edition is substantially the same as the First.

H. N. E.

BITTON VICARAGE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, _February, 1884_.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

The following Notes on the "Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare"

were published in "The Garden" from March to September, 1877.

They are now republished with additions and with such corrections as the altered form of publication required or allowed.

As the Papers appeared from week to week, I had to thank many correspondents (mostly complete strangers to myself) for useful suggestions and inquiries; and I would again invite any further suggestions or remarks, especially in the way of correction of any mistakes or omissions that I may have made, and I should feel thankful to any one that would kindly do me this favour.

In republishing the Papers, I have been very doubtful whether I ought not to have rejected the cultural remarks on several of the plants, which I had added with a special reference to the horticultural character of "The Garden" newspaper. But I decided to retain them, on finding that they interested some readers, by whom the literary and Shakespearean notices were less valued.

The weekly preparation of the Papers was a very pleasant study to myself, and introduced me to much literary and horticultural information of which I was previously ignorant. In republishing them I hope that some of my readers may meet with equal pleasure, and with some little information that may be new to them.

H. N. E.

BITTON VICARAGE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, _May, 1878_.

INTRODUCTION.

All the commentators on Shakespeare are agreed upon one point, that he was the most wonderfully many-sided writer that the world has yet seen.

Every art and science are more or less noticed by him, so far as they were known in his day; every business and profession are more or less accurately described; and so it has come to pa.s.s that, though the main circ.u.mstances of his life are pretty well known, yet the students of every art and science, and the members of every business and profession, have delighted to claim him as their fellow-labourer. Books have been written at various times by various writers, which have proved (to the complete satisfaction of the writers) that he was a soldier,[1:1] a sailor, a lawyer,[1:2] an astronomer, a physician,[1:3] a divine,[1:4] a printer,[1:5] an actor, a courtier, a sportsman, an angler,[2:1] and I know not what else besides.

I also propose to claim him as a fellow-labourer. A lover of flowers and gardening myself, I claim Shakespeare as equally a lover of flowers and gardening; and this I propose to prove by showing how, in all his writings, he exhibits his strong love for flowers, and a very fair, though not perhaps a very deep, knowledge of plants; but I do not intend to go further. That he was a lover of plants I shall have no difficulty in showing; but I do not, therefore, believe that he was a professed gardener, and I am quite sure he can in no sense be claimed as a botanist, in the scientific sense of the term. His knowledge of plants was simply the knowledge that every man may have who goes through the world with his eyes open to the many beauties of Nature that surround him, and who does not content himself with simply looking, and then pa.s.sing on, but tries to find out something of the inner meaning of the beauties he sees, and to carry away with him some of the lessons which they were doubtless meant to teach. But Shakespeare was able to go further than this. He had the great gift of being able to describe what he saw in a way that few others have arrived at; he could communicate to others the pleasure that he felt himself, not by long descriptions, but by a few simple words, a few natural touches, and a few well-chosen epithets, which bring the plants and flowers before us in the freshest, and often in a most touching way.

For this reason the study of the Plant-lore of Shakespeare is a very pleasant study, and there are other things which add to this pleasure.

One especial pleasure arises from the thoroughly English character of his descriptions. It has often been observed that wherever the scenes of his plays are laid, and whatever foreign characters he introduces, yet they really are all Englishmen of the time of Elizabeth, and the scenes are all drawn from the England of his day. This is certainly true of the plants and flowers we meet with in the plays; they are thoroughly English plants that (with very few exceptions) he saw in the hedgerows and woods of Warwickshire,[2:2] or in his own or his friends' gardens.

The descriptions are thus thoroughly fresh and real; they tell of the country and of the outdoor life he loved, and they never smell of the study lamp. In this respect he differs largely from Milton, whose descriptions (with very few exceptions) recall the cla.s.sic and Italian writers. He differs, too, from his contemporary Spenser, who has certainly some very sweet descriptions of flowers, which show that he knew and loved them, but are chiefly allusions to cla.s.sical flowers, which he names in such a way as to show that he often did not fully know what they were, but named them because it was the right thing for a cla.s.sical poet so to do. Shakespeare never names a flower or plant unnecessarily; they all come before us, when they do come, in the most natural way, as if the particular flower named was the only one that could be named on that occasion. We have nothing in his writings, for instance, like the long list of trees described (and in the most interesting way) in the first canto of the First Book of the "Faerie Queene," and indeed he is curiously distinct from all his contemporaries. Chaucer, before him, spoke much of flowers and plants, and drew them as from the life. In the century after him Herrick may be named as another who sung of flowers as he saw them; but the real contemporaries of Shakespeare are, with few exceptions,[3:1] very silent on the subject. One instance will suffice. Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems are all professedly about the country--they abound in woods and vales, shepherds and swains--yet in all his poems there is scarcely a single allusion to a flower in a really natural way. And because Shakespeare only introduces flowers in their right place, and in the most purely natural way, there is one necessary result. I shall show that the number of flowers he introduces is large, but the number he omits, and which he must have known, is also very large, and well worth noting.[4:1] He has no notice, under any name, of such common flowers as the Snowdrop, the Forget-me-Not, the Foxglove, the Lily of the Valley,[4:2] and many others which he must have known, but which he has not named; because when he names a plant or flower, he does so not to show his own knowledge, but because the particular flower or plant is wanted in the particular place in which he uses it.

Another point of interest in the Plant-lore of Shakespeare is the wide range of his observation. He gathers flowers for us from all sorts of places--from the "turfy mountains" and the "flat meads;" from the "bosky acres" and the "unshrubbed down;" from "rose-banks" and "hedges even-pleached." But he is equally at home in the gardens of the country gentlemen with their "pleached bowers" and "leafy orchards." Nor is he a stranger to gardens of a much higher pretension, for he will pick us famous Strawberries from the garden of my Lord of Ely in Holborn; he will pick us White and Red Roses from the garden of the Temple; and he will pick us "Apric.o.c.ks" from the royal garden of Richard the Second's sad queen. I propose to follow Shakespeare into these many pleasant spots, and to pick each flower and note each plant which he has thought worthy of notice. I do not propose to make a selection of his plants, for that would not give a proper idea of the extent of his knowledge, but to note every tree, and plant, and flower that he has noted. And as I pick each flower, I shall let Shakespeare first tell us all he has to say about it; in other words, I shall quote every pa.s.sage in which he names the plant or flower; for here, again, it would not do to make a selection from the pa.s.sages, my object not being to give "floral extracts," but to let him say all he can in his own choice words. There is not much difficulty in this, but there is difficulty in determining how much or how little to quote. On the one hand, it often seems cruel to cut short a n.o.ble pa.s.sage in the midst of which some favourite flower is placed; but, on the other hand, to quote at too great a length would extend the book beyond reasonable limits. The rule, therefore, must be to confine the quotations within as small a s.p.a.ce as possible, only taking care that the s.p.a.ce is not so small as entirely to spoil the beauty of the description. Then, having listened to all that Shakespeare has to say on each flower, I shall follow with ill.u.s.trations (few and short) from contemporary writers; then with any observations that may present themselves in the identification of Shakespeare's plant with their modern representatives, finishing each with anything in the history or modern uses or cultivation of the plant that I think will interest readers.

For the identification of the plants, we have an excellent and trustworthy guide in John Gerard, who was almost an exact contemporary of Shakespeare. Gerard's life ranged from 1545 to 1612, and Shakespeare's from 1564 to 1616. Whether they were acquainted or not we do not know, but it is certainly not improbable that they were; I should think it almost certain that they must have known each other's published works.[5:1]

My subject naturally divides itself into two parts--

First, The actual plants and flowers named by Shakespeare; Second, His knowledge of gardens and gardening.

I now go at once to the first division, naming each plant in its alphabetical order.

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] "Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?" by W. J. Thoms, F.S.A., 1865, 8vo.

[1:2] "Shakespeare's legal acquirements considered in a letter to J. P.

Collier," by John, Lord Campbell, 1859, 12mo. "Shakespeare a Lawyer," by W. L. Rushton, 1858, 12mo.

[1:3] "Remarks on the Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," by J. C.

Bucknill, 1860, 8vo.

[1:4] Eaton's "Shakespeare and the Bible," 1858, 8vo.

[1:5] "Shakespere and Typography; being an attempt to show Shakespere's personal connection with, and technical knowledge of, the Art of Printing," by William Blades, 1872, 8vo.

[2:1] "Was Shakespeare an Angler," by H. N. Ellacombe, 1883, 12mo.

[2:2] "The country around Stratford presents the perfection of quiet English scenery; it is remarkable for its wealth of lovely wild flowers, for its deep meadows on each side of the tranquil Avon, and for its rich, sweet woodlands."--E. DOWDEN'S _Shakespeare in Literature Primers_, 1877.

[3:1] The two chief exceptions are Ben Jonson (1574-1637) and William Browne (1590-1645). Jonson, though born in London, and living there the greatest part of his life, was evidently a real lover of flowers, and frequently shows a practical knowledge of them. Browne was also a keen observer of nature, and I have made several quotations from his "Britannia's Pastorals."

[4:1] Perhaps the most noteworthy plant omitted is Tobacco--Shakespeare must have been well acquainted with it, not only as every one in his day knew of it, but as a friend and companion of Ben Jonson, he must often have been in the company of smokers. Ben Jonson has frequent allusions to it, and almost all the sixteenth-century writers have something to say about it; but Shakespeare never names the herb, or alludes to it in any way whatever.

[4:2] It seems probable that the Lily of the Valley was not recognized as a British plant in Shakespeare's time, and was very little grown even in gardens. Turner says, "Ephemeru is called in duch meyblumle, in french Muguet. It groweth plentuously in Germany, but not in England that ever I coulde see, savinge in my Lordes gardine at Syon. The Poticaries in Germany do name it Lilium Covallium, it may be called in englishe May Lilies."--_Names of Herbes_, 1548. Coghan in 1596 says much the same: "I say nothing of them because they are not usuall in gardens."--_Haven of Health._

[5:1] I may mention the following works as more or less ill.u.s.trating the Plant-lore of Shakespeare:--

1.--"Shakspere's Garden," by Sidney Beisly, 1864. I have to thank this author for information on a few points, but on the whole it is not a satisfactory account of the plants of Shakespeare, and I have not found it of much use.

2.--"Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon," and

3.--"Girard's Flowers of Shakespeare and of Milton," 2 vols.

These two works are pretty drawing-room books, and do not profess to be more.

4.--"Natural History of Shakespeare, being Selections of Flowers, Fruits, and Animals," arranged by Bessie Mayou, 1877.