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Transcriber's Notes: Some typographical and punctuation errors have been
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  [=o] = "o" with a macron
  [=u] = "u" with a macron
  [=w] = "w" with a macron




_THE PLANT-LORE AND GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE._




PRESS NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION.


"It would be hard to name a better commonplace book for summer
lawns.... The lover of poetry, the lover of gardening, and the lover
of quaint, out-of-the-way knowledge will each find something to please
him.... It is a delightful example of gardening literature."--_Pall
Mall Gazette._

"Mr. Ellacombe, with a double enthusiasm for Shakespeare and for his
garden, has produced a very readable and graceful volume on the
Plant-Lore of Shakespeare."--_Saturday Review._

"Mr. Ellacombe brings to his task an enthusiastic love of horticulture,
wedded to no inconsiderable practical and theoretical knowledge of it; a
mind cultivated by considerable acquaintance with the Greek and Latin
classics, and trained for this special subject by a course of extensive
reading among the contemporaries of his author: and a capacity for
patient and unwearied research, which he has shown by the stores of
learning he has drawn from a class of books rarely dipped into by the
student--Saxon and Early English herbals and books of leechcraft; the
result is a work which is entitled from its worth to a place in every
Shakesperian library."--_Spectator._

"The work has fallen into the hands of one who knows not only the
plants themselves, but also their literary history; and it may be
said that Shakespeare's flowers now for the first time find an
historian."--_Field._

"A delightful book has been compiled, and it is as accurate as it is
delightful."--_Gardener's Chronicle._

"Mr. Ellacombe's book well deserves a place on the shelves of both the
student of Shakespeare and the lover of plant lore."--_Journal of
Botany._

"By patient industry, systematically bestowed, Mr. Ellacombe has
produced a book of considerable interest;... full of facts, grouped
on principles of common sense about quotations from our great
poet."--_Guardian._

"Mr. Ellacombe is an old and faithful labourer in this field of
criticism. His 'Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare'... is the
fullest and best book on the subject."--_The Literary World (American)._




                                 THE

                      PLANT-LORE & GARDEN-CRAFT

                                  OF

                             SHAKESPEARE.


                                  BY

                    REV. HENRY N. ELLACOMBE, M.A.,

                      OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD,
     VICAR OF BITTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, AND HON. CANON OF BRISTOL.


                           SECOND EDITION.


                             PRINTED FOR
                         W. SATCHELL AND CO.,
                             AND SOLD BY,
                     SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,
                               LONDON.

                                1884.




     "My Herbale booke in Folio I unfold.
      I pipe of plants, I sing of somer flowers."

                               CUTWODE, _Caltha Poetarum_, st. 1.




TO THE READER.


"Faultes escaped in the Printing, correcte with your pennes; omitted by
my neglygence, overslippe with patience; committed by ignorance, remit
with favour."

                  LILY, _Euphues and his England_, Address to the
                                 gentlemen Readers.




CONTENTS.


     INTRODUCTION                                      1

     PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE                         7

     GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE                     333

     APPENDIX--

         I. THE DAISY                                359

        II. THE SEASONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS       379

       III. NAMES OF PLANTS                          391

     INDEX OF PLAYS                                  421

     GENERAL INDEX                                   431




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
passages 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 Noble 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 pass that, though the main
circumstances 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
passing 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 classic 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 classical 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
classical 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 "Apricocks" 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 passage in which he
names the plant or flower; for here, again, it would not do to make a
selection from the passages, 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 noble passage 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 space as possible, only
taking care that the space 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 illustrations (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