The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 95

SEDGE.

(1) _2nd Servant._

And Cytherea all in Sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath, Even as the waving Sedges play with wind.

_Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, sc. 2. (53).

(2) _Iris._

You nymphs, called Naiads, of the winding brooks, With your Sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (128).

(3) _Julia._

The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every Sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean.

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act ii, sc. 7 (25).

(4) _Bened.i.c.k._

Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into Sedges.

_Much Ado About Nothing_, act ii, sc. 1 (209).

(5) _Hotspur._

The gentle Severn's Sedgy bank.

_1st Henry IV_, act i, sc. 3 (98).

(6) _See_ REEDS, No. 7.

Sedge is from the Anglo-Saxon Secg, and meant almost any waterside plant. Thus we read of the Moor Secg, and the Red Secg, and the Sea Holly (_Eryngium maritimum_) is called the Holly Sedge. And so it was doubtless used by Shakespeare. In our day Sedge is confined to the genus Carex, a family growing in almost all parts of the world, and containing about 1000 species, of which we have fifty-eight in Great Britain; they are most graceful ornaments both of our brooks and ditches; and some of them will make handsome garden plants. One very handsome species--perhaps the handsomest--is C. pendula, with long ta.s.sel-like flower-spikes hanging down in a very beautiful form, which is not uncommon as a wild plant, and can easily be grown in the garden, and the flower-spikes will be found very handsome additions to tall nosegays. There is another North American species, C. Fraseri, which is a good plant for the north side of a rock-work: it is a small plant, but the flower is a spike of the purest white, and is very curious, and unlike any other flower.

SENNA.

_Macbeth._

What Rhubarb, Senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence?[277:1]

_Macbeth_, act v, sc. 3 (55).

Even in the time of Shakespeare several attempts were made to grow the Senna in England, but without success; so that he probably only knew it as an important "purgative drug." The Senna of commerce is made from the leaves of Ca.s.sia lanceolata and Ca.s.sia Senna, both natives of Africa, and so unfitted for open-air cultivation in England. The Ca.s.sias are a large family, mostly with handsome yellow flowers, some of which are very ornamental greenhouse plants; and one from North America, Ca.s.sia Marylandica, may be considered hardy in the South of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[277:1] In this pa.s.sage the old reading for "Senna" is "Cyme," and this is the reading of the Globe Shakespeare; but I quote the pa.s.sage with "Senna" because it is so printed in many editions.

SPEARGRa.s.s.

_Peto._

He persuaded us to do the like.

_Bardolph._

Yea, and to tickle our noses with Speargra.s.s to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it was the blood of true men.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (339).

Except in this pa.s.sage I can only find Speargra.s.s mentioned in Lupton's "Notable Things," and there without any description, only as part of a medical recipe: "Whosoever is tormented with sciatica or the hip gout, let them take an herb called Speargra.s.s, and stamp it and lay a little thereof upon the grief." The plant is not mentioned by Lyte, Gerard, Parkinson, or the other old herbalists, and so it is somewhat of a puzzle. Steevens quotes from an old play, "Victories of Henry the Fifth": "Every day I went into the field, I would take a straw and thrust it into my nose, and make my nose bleed;" but a straw was never called Speargra.s.s. Asparagus was called Speerage, and the young shoots might have been used for the purpose, but I have never heard of such a use; Ranunculus flammula was called Spearwort, from its lanceolate leaves, and so (according to c.o.c.kayne) was Carex acuta, still called Spiesgra.s.s in German. Mr. Beisly suggests the Yarrow or Millfoil; and we know from several authorities (Lyte, Hollybush, Gerard, Phillip, Cole, Skinner, and Lindley) that the Yarrow was called Nosebleed; but there seems no reason to suppose that it was ever called Speargra.s.s, or could have been called a Gra.s.s at all, though the term Gra.s.s was often used in the most general way. Dr. Prior suggests the Common Reed, which is probable. I have been rather inclined to suppose it to be one of the Horse-tails (Equiseta).[278:1] They are very sharp and spearlike, and their rough surfaces would soon draw blood; and as a decoction of Horse-tail was a remedy for stopping bleeding of the nose, I have thought it very probable that such a supposed virtue could only have arisen when remedies were sought for on the principle of "similia similibus curantur;" so that a plant, which in one form produced nose-bleeding, would, when otherwise administered, be the natural remedy. But I now think that all these suggested plants must give way in favour of the common Couch-gra.s.s (_Tritic.u.m repens_). In the eastern counties, this is still called Speargra.s.s; and the sharp underground stolons might easily draw blood, when the nose is tickled with them. The old emigrants from the eastern counties took the name with them to America, but applied it to a Poa (Webster's "Dictionary," s.v.

Speargra.s.s).

FOOTNOTES:

[278:1] "Hippurus Anglice dicitur sharynge gyrs."--TURNER'S _Libellus_, 1538.

SQUASH, _see_ PEAS.

STOVER.