The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 36

GILLIFLOWERS, _see_ CARNATIONS.

GINGER.

(1) _Clown._

I must have Saffron to colour the Warden pies--Mace--Dates?

none, that's out of my note; Nutmegs, seven--a race or two of Ginger, but that I may beg.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (48).

(2) _Sir Toby._

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale.

_Clown._

Yes, by St. Anne, and Ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.

_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 3 (123).

(3) _Pompey._

First, here's Young Master Rash, he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old Ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds, of which he made five marks ready money; marry, then, Ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead.

_Measure for Measure_, act iv, sc. 3 (4).

(4) _Salanio._

I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped Ginger.

_Merchant of Venice_, act iii, sc. 1 (9).

(5) _2nd Carrier._

I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of Ginger to be delivered as far as Charing Cross.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 1 (26).

(6) _Orleans._

He's of the colour of the Nutmeg.

_Dauphin._

And of the heat of the Ginger.

_Henry V_, act iii, sc. 7 (20).

(7) _Julia._

What is't you took up so Gingerly?

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act i, sc. 2 (70).

(8) _Costard._

An I had but one penny in the world, thou should'st have it to buy Ginger-bread.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 1 (74).

(9) _Hotspur._

Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave "in sooth,"

And such protest of pepper Ginger-bread To velvet-guards and Sunday-citizens.

_1st Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 1 (258).

Ginger was well known both to the Greeks and Romans. It was imported from Arabia, together with its name, Zingiberri, which it has retained, with little variation, in all languages.

When it was first imported into England is not known, but probably by the Romans, for it occurs as a common ingredient in many of the Anglo-Saxon medical recipes. Russell, in the "Boke of Nurture," mentions several kinds of Ginger; as green and white, "colombyne, valadyne, and Maydelyn." In Shakespeare's time it was evidently very common and cheap.

It is produced from the roots of Zingiber officinale, a member of the large and handsome family of the Ginger-worts. The family contains some of the most beautiful of our greenhouse plants, as the Hedychiums, Alpinias, and Mantisias; and, though entirely tropical, most of the species are of easy cultivation in England. Ginger is very easily reared in hotbeds, and I should think it very probable that it may have been so grown in Shakespeare's time. Gerard attempted to grow it, but he naturally failed, by trying to grow it in the open ground as a hardy plant; yet "it sprouted and budded forth greene leaves in my garden in the heate of somer;" and he tells us that plants were sent him by "an honest and expert apothecarie, William Dries, of Antwerp," and "that the same had budded and grown in the said Dries' garden."

GOOSEBERRIES.

_Falstaff._

All the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a Gooseberry.

_2nd Henry IV_, act i, sc. 2 (194).

The Gooseberry is probably a native of the North of England, but Turner said (s.v. _uva crispa_) "it groweth onely that I have sene in England, in gardines, but I have sene it in Germany abrode in the fieldes amonge other busshes."