The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 122

Perhaps the time of year may have suggested to Laertes that pretty but sad address to his sister,

"O Rose of May!

Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!"

_t.i.tus Andronicus._ There is a plant-note in act ii, sc. 2--

"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe."

_Romeo and Juliet._ A slight plant-note of the season may be detected in the nightly singing of the nightingale in the pomegranate tree in the third act.

_King Lear._ The plants named point to one season only, the spring. At no other time could the poor mad king have gone singing aloud,

"Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With harlock, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, And darnel."

I think this would also be the time for gathering the fresh shoots of the samphire; but I do not know this for certain.[389:1]

_Two n.o.ble Kinsmen._ Here the season is distinctly stated for us by the poet. The scene is laid in May, and the flowers named are all in accordance--daffodils, daisies, marigolds, oxlips, primrose, roses, and thyme.

I cannot claim any great literary results from this inquiry into the seasons of Shakespeare as indicated by the flowers named; on the contrary, I must confess that the results are exceedingly small--I might almost say, none at all--still I do not regret the time and trouble that the inquiry has demanded of me. In every literary inquiry the value of the research is not to be measured by the visible results. It is something even to find out that there are no results, and so save trouble to future inquirers. But in this case the research has not been altogether in vain. Every addition, however small, to the critical study of our great Poet has its value; and to myself, as a student of the Natural History of Shakespeare, the inquiry has been a very pleasant one, because it has confirmed my previous opinion, that even in such common matters as the names of the most familiar every-day plants he does not write in a careless hap-hazard way, naming just the plant that comes uppermost in his thoughts, but that they are all named in the most careful and correct manner, exactly fitting into the scenes in which they are placed, and so giving to each pa.s.sage a brightness and a reality which would be entirely wanting if the plants were set down in the ignorance of guess-work. Shakespeare knew the plants well; and though his knowledge is never paraded, by its very thoroughness it cannot be hid.

FOOTNOTES:

[386:1] If "the rite of May" (act iv, sc. 1) is to be strictly limited to May-Day, the t.i.tle of a "_Midsummer_ Night's Dream" does not apply.

The difficulty can only be met by supposing the scene to be laid at any night in May, even in the last night, which would coincide with our 12th of June.

[388:1] "The Alexandrine figs are of the black kind having a white rift or Chanifre, and are surnamed Delicate. . . . Certain figs there be, which are both early and also lateward; . . . . they are ripe first in harvest, and afterwards in time of vintage; . . . . also some there be which beare thrice a year" (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ b. xv., c. 18, P.

Holland's translation, 1601).

[389:1] The objection to fixing the date of the play in spring is that Cordelia bids search to be made for Lear "in every acre of the high-grown field." If this can only refer to a field of corn at its full growth, there is a confusion of seasons. But if the larger meaning is given to "field," which it bears in "flowers of the field," "beasts of the field," the confusion is avoided. The words would then refer to the wild overgrowth of an open country.

APPENDIX III.

_NAMES OF PLANTS._

_Juliet._

What's in a name? That which we call a Rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 2.

NAMES OF PLANTS.

Finding that many are interested in the old names of the plants named by Shakespeare, I give in this appendix the names of the plants, showing at one view how they were written and explained by different writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The list might have been very largely increased, especially by giving the forms used at an earlier date, but my object is to show the forms of the names in which they were (or might have been) familiar to Shakespeare. The authors quoted are these:

1440. "Promptorium Parvulorum."

1483. "Catholicon Anglic.u.m."

1548. Turner's "Names of Herbes," and "Herbal," 1568.

1597. Gerard's "Herbal."

1611. Cotgrave's "Dictionarie."[393:1]

ACONITUM.

_Turner._ Aconitum.

_Gerard._ Of Wolfes-banes and Monkeshoods.

_Cotgrave._ Aconit; Aconitum, _A most venemous hearbe, of two princ.i.p.all kindes_; viz., _Libbard's-bane, and Wolfe-bane_.

ACORN.

_Promptorium._ Accorne, or archarde, frute of the oke; _Glans_.

_Catholicon._ An Acorne; _haec glans dis, hec glandicula_.

_Cotgrave._ Gland; _An Acorne_; _Mast of Oakes or other trees_.

ALMOND.

_Promptorium._ Almaund, frute; _Amigdalum_.

_Catholicon._ An Almond tre; _amigdalus_.

_Turner._ The Almon tree.

_Gerard._ The Almond tree.

_Cotgrave._ Amygdales; _Almonds_.

ALOES.

_Turner._ Aloe.

_Gerard._ Of Herbe Aloe, or Sea Houseleeke.

_Cotgrave._ Aloes; _The hearbe Aloes_, _Sea Houseleeke_, _Sea aigreen_.