The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 111

_See also_ HEBENON, p. 118.

The Yew, though undoubtedly an indigenous British plant, has not a British name. The name is derived from the Latin _Iva_, and "under this name we find the _Yew_ so inextricably mixed up with the _Ivy_ that, as dissimilar as are the two trees, there can be no doubt that these names are in their origin identical." So says Dr. Prior, and he proceeds to give a long and very interesting account of the origin of the name. The connection of Yew with _iva_ and _Ivy_ is still shown in the French _if_, the German _eibe_, and the Portuguese _iva_. _Yew_ seems to be quite a modern form; in the old vocabularies the word is variously spelt iw, ewe,[328:1] eugh-tre,[328:2] haw-tre, new-tre, ew, uhe, and iw.

The connection of the Yew with churchyards and funerals is noticed by Shakespeare in Nos. 1, 5, and 6, and its celebrated connection with English bow-making in No. 3, where "double-fatal" may probably refer to its noxious qualities when living and its use for deadly weapons afterwards. These noxious qualities, joined to its dismal colour, and to its constant use in churchyards, caused it to enter into the supposed charms and incantations of the quacks of the Middle Ages. Yet Gerard entirely denies its noxious qualities: "They say that the fruit thereof being eaten is not onely dangerous and deadly unto man, but if birds do eat thereof it causeth them to cast their feathers and many times to die--all which I dare boldly affirme is altogether untrue; for when I was yong and went to schoole, divers of my schoolfellowes, and likewise my selfe, did eat our fils of the berries of this tree, and have not only slept under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also, without any hurt at all, and that not at one time but many times."

Browne says the same in his "Vulgar Errors:" "That Yew and the berries thereof are harmlesse, we know" (book ii. c. 7). There is no doubt that the Yew berries are almost if not quite harmless,[328:3] and I find them forming an element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quoting as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers submitted. It is given in a Leech Book of the tenth century or earlier, and is thus translated by c.o.c.kayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, ca.s.suck, the netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh mallow, fen, mint, dill, lily, attorlothe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terrae, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolida; pour them over with ale, add holy water, sing this charm over them thrice [here follow some long charms which I need not extract]; these charms a man may sing over a wound" ("Leech Book," iii. 63).

I need say little of the uses of the Yew wood in furniture, nor of the many grand specimens of the tree which are scattered throughout the churchyards of England, except to say that "the origin of planting Yew trees in churchyards is still a subject of considerable perplexity. As the Yew was of such great importance in war and field sports before the use of gunpowder was known, perhaps the parsons of parishes were required to see that the churchyard was capable of supplying bows to the males of each parish of proper age; but in this case we should scarcely have been left without some evidence on the matter. Others again state that the trees in question were intended solely to furnish branches for use on Palm Sunday"[329:1] (_see_ PALM, p. 195), "while many suppose that the Yew was naturally selected for planting around churches on account of its emblematic character, as expressive of the solemnity of death, while, from its perennial verdure and long duration, it might be regarded as a pattern of immortality."--_Penny Magazine_, 1843.

A good list of the largest and oldest Yews in England will be found in Loudon's "Arboretum."

The "dismal Yew" concludes the list of Shakespeare's plants and the first part of my proposed subject; and while I hope that those readers who may have gone with me so far have met with some things to interest them, I hope also they will agree with me that gardening and the love of flowers is not altogether the modern accomplishment that many of our gardeners now fancy it to be. Here are two hundred names of plants in one writer, and that writer not at all writing on horticulture, but only mentioning plants and flowers in the most incidental manner as they happened naturally to fall in his way. I should doubt if there is any similar instance in any modern English writer, and feel very sure that there is no such instance in any modern English dramatist. It shows how familiar gardens and flowers were to Shakespeare, and that he must have had frequent opportunities for observing his favourites (for most surely he was fond of flowers), not only in their wild and native homes, but in the gardens of farmhouses and parsonages, country houses, and n.o.blemen's stately pleasaunces. The quotations that I have been able to make from the early writers in the ninth and tenth centuries, down to gossiping old Gerard, the learned Lord Chancellor Bacon, and that excellent old gardiner Parkinson, all show the same thing, that the love of flowers is no new thing in England, still less a foreign fashion, but that it is innate in us, a real instinct, that showed itself as strongly in our forefathers as in ourselves; and when we find that such men as Shakespeare and Lord Bacon (to mention no others) were almost proud to show their knowledge of plants and love of flowers, we can say that such love and knowledge is thoroughly manly and English.

In the inquiry into Shakespeare's plants I have entered somewhat largely into the etymological history of the names. I have been tempted into this by the personal interest I feel in the history of plant names, and I hope it may not have been uninteresting to my readers; but I do not think this part of the subject could have been pa.s.sed by, for I agree with Johnston: "That there is more interest and as much utility in settling the nomenclature of our pastoral bards as that of all herbalists and dry-as-dust botanists" ("Botany of the Eastern Border").

I have also at times entered into the botany and physiology of the plants; this may have seemed needless to some, but I have thought that such notices were often necessary to the right understanding of the plants named, and again I shelter myself under the authority of a favourite old author: "Consider (gentle readers) what shiftes he shall be put unto, and how rawe he must needs be in explanation of metaphors, resemblances, and comparisons, that is ignorant of the nature of herbs and plants from whence their similitudes be taken, for the inlightening and garnishing of sentences."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.

I have said that my subject naturally divides itself into two parts, first, The Plants and Flowers named by Shakespeare; second, His Knowledge of Gardens and Gardening. The first part is now concluded, and I go to the second part, which will be very much shorter, and which may be ent.i.tled "The Garden-craft of Shakespeare."

FOOTNOTES:

[327:1] The reading of the folio is "young tree," for "Yew tree."

[328:1]

"An Eu tre (Ewetre); taxus, taximus."--_Catholicon Anglic.u.m._

[328:2]

"The eugh obedient to the bender's will."--SPENSER, _F. Q._, i. 9.

"So far as eughen bow a shaft may send."--_F. Q._, ii. 11-19.

[328:3] There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed, and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by children. (_See_ HEBENON.)

[329:1] "For eucheson we have non Olyfe that bereth grene leves we takon in stede of hit Hew and Palmes wyth, and beroth abowte in procession and so this day we callyn palme sonnenday."--_Sermon for "Dominica in ramis palmarum," Cotton MSS._

PART II.

_THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE._

"The flowers are sweet, the colours fresh and trim."

_Venus and Adonis._

"Retired Leisure That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure."

MILTON, _Il Penseroso_.

GARDEN-CRAFT.

Any account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" would be very incomplete if it did not include his "Garden-craft." There are a great many pa.s.sages scattered throughout his works, some of them among the most beautiful that he ever wrote, in which no particular tree, herb, or flower is mentioned by name, but which show his intimate knowledge of plants and gardening, and his great affection for them. It is from these pa.s.sages, even more than from the pa.s.sages I have already quoted, in which particular flowers are named, that we learn how thoroughly his early country life had influenced and marked his character, and how his whole spirit was most naturally coloured by it. Numberless allusions to flowers and their culture prove that his boyhood and early manhood were spent in the country, and that as he pa.s.sed through the parks, fields, and lanes of his native county, or spent pleasant days in the gardens and orchards of the manor-houses and farm-houses of the neighbourhood, his eyes and ears were open to all the sights and sounds of a healthy country life, and he was, perhaps unconsciously, laying up in his memory a goodly store of pleasant pictures and homely country talk, to be introduced in his own wonderful way in tragedies and comedies, which, while often professedly treating of very different times and countries, have really given us some of the most faithful pictures of the country life of the Englishman of Queen Elizabeth's time, drawn with all the freshness and simplicity that can only come from a real love of the subject.

"Flowers I noted," is his own account of himself (Sonnet xcix.), and with what love he noted them, and with what carefulness and faithfulness he wrote of them, is shown in every play he published, and almost in every act and every scene. And what I said of his notices of particular flowers is still more true of his general descriptions--that they are never laboured, or introduced as for a purpose, but that each pa.s.sage is the simple utterance of his ingrained love of the country, the natural outcome of a keen, observant eye, joined to a great power of faithful description, and an unlimited command of the fittest language. It is this vividness and freshness that gives such a reality to all Shakespeare's notices of country life, and which make them such pleasant reading to all lovers of plants and gardening.

These notices of the "Garden-craft of Shakespeare" I now proceed to quote; but my quotations in this part will be made on a different plan to that which I adopted in the account of his "Plant-lore." I shall not here think it necessary to quote all the pa.s.sages in which he mentions different objects of country life, but I shall content myself with such pa.s.sages as throw light on his knowledge of horticulture, and which to some extent ill.u.s.trate the horticulture of his day, and these pa.s.sages I must arrange under a few general heads. In this way the second part of my subject will be very much shorter than my first, but I have good reasons for hoping that those who have been interested in the long account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" will be equally interested in the shorter account of his "Garden-craft," and will acknowledge that the one would be incomplete without the other. I commence with those pa.s.sages which treat generally of--

I.--FLOWERS, BLOSSOMS, AND BUDS.

(1) _Quickly._

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act v, sc. 5 (77).

(2) _Oberon._

She his hairy temples then had rounded With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers; And that same dew, which sometime in the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes, Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (56).

(3) _Gaunt._

Suppose the singing birds musicians, The gra.s.s whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd, The flowers fair ladies.

_Richard II_, act i, sc. 3 (288).

(4) _Katharine._

When I am dead, good wench, Let me be used with honour; strew me over With maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave.

_Henry VIII_, act iv, sc. 2 (167).