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.

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.

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—

I now go at once to the first division, naming each plant in its alphabetical order.

FOOTNOTES:

PART I.

THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE.

ACONITUM.

There is another place in which it is probable that Shakespeare alludes to the Aconite; he does not name it, but he compares the effects of the poison to gunpowder, as in the passage above.

The plant here named as being as powerful in its action as gunpowder is the Aconitum Napellus (the Wolf's bane or Monk's-hood). It is a member of a large family, all of which are more or less poisonous, and the common Monk's-hood as much so as any. Two species are found in America, but, for the most part, the family is confined to the northern portion of the Eastern Hemisphere, ranging from the Himalaya through Europe to Great Britain. It is now found wild in a few parts of England, but it is certainly not indigenous; it was, however, very early introduced into England, being found in all the English vocabularies of plants from the tenth century downwards, and frequently mentioned in the early English medical recipes.

Its names are all interesting. In the Anglo-Saxon Vocabularies it is called thung, which, however, seems to have been a general name for any very poisonous plant;[10:1] it was then called Aconite, as the English form of its Greek and Latin name, but this name is now seldom used, being, by a curious perversion, solely given to the pretty little early-flowering Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), which is not a true Aconite, though closely allied; it then got the name of Wolf's-bane, as the direct translation of the Greek lycoctonum, a name which it had from the idea that arrows tipped with the juice, or baits anointed with it, would kill wolves and other vermin; and, lastly, it got the expressive names of Monk's-hood[10:2] and the Helmet-flower, from the curious shape of the upper sepal overtopping the rest of the flower.

As to its poisonous qualities, all authors agree that every species of the family is very poisonous, the A. ferox of the Himalaya being probably the most so. Every part of the plant, from the root to the pollen dust, seems to be equally powerful, and it has the special bad quality of being, to inexperienced eyes, so like some harmless plant, that the poison has been often taken by mistake with deadly results. This charge against the plant is of long standing, dating certainly from the time of Virgil—miseros fallunt aconita legentes—and, no doubt, from much before his time. As it was a common belief that poisons were antidotes against other poisons, the Aconite was supposed to be an antidote against the most deadly one—

Ben Jonson, Sejanus, act iii, sc. 3.

Yet, in spite of its poisonous qualities, the plant has always held, and deservedly, a place among the ornamental plants of our gardens; its stately habit and its handsome leaves and flowers make it a favourite. Nearly all the species are worth growing, the best, perhaps, being A. Napellus, both white and blue, A. paniculatum, A. japonicum, and A. autumnale. All the species grow well in shade and under trees. In Shakespeare's time Gerard grew in his London garden four species—A. lycoctonum, A. variegatum, A. Napellus, and A. Pyrenaicum.

FOOTNOTES:

ACORN, see Oak.

ALMOND.

"An Almond for a parrot" seems to have been a proverb for the greatest temptation that could be put before a man. The Almond tree is a native of Asia and North Africa, but it was very early introduced into England, probably by the Romans. It occurs in the Anglo-Saxon lists of plants, and in the "Durham Glossary" (11th century) it has the name of the "Easterne nutte-beam." The tree was always a favourite both for the beauty of its flowers, which come very early in the year, and for its Biblical associations, so that in Shakespeare's time the trees were "in our London gardens and orchards in great plenty" (Gerard). Before Shakespeare's time, Spenser had sung its praises thus—

F. Q., i. 7, 32.

The older English name seems to have been Almande—

Romaunt of the Rose;

Alexander Neckam;

and both this old name and its more modern form of Almond came to us through the French amande (Provençal, amondala), from the Greek and Latin amygdalus. What this word meant is not very clear, but the native Hebrew name of the plant (shaked) is most expressive. The word signifies "awakening," and so is a most fitting name for a tree whose beautiful flowers, appearing in Palestine in January, show the wakening up of Creation. The fruit also has always been a special favourite, and though it is strongly imbued with prussic acid, it is considered a wholesome fruit. By the old writers many wonderful virtues were attributed to the fruit, but I am afraid it was chiefly valued for its supposed virtue, that "five or six being taken fasting do keepe a man from being drunke" (Gerard).[12:1] This popular error is not yet extinct.

As an ornamental tree the Almond should be in every shrubbery, and, as in Gerard's time, it may still be planted in town gardens with advantage. There are several varieties of the common Almond, differing slightly in the colour and size of the flowers; and there is one little shrub (Amygdalus nana) of the family that is very pretty in the front row of a shrubbery. All the species are deciduous.

FOOTNOTES:

ALOES.

Aloes have the peculiarity that they are the emblems of the most intense bitterness and of the richest and most costly fragrance. In the Bible Aloes are mentioned five times, and always with reference to their excellence and costliness.[13:1] Juvenal speaks of it only as a bitter—

Pliny describes it very minutely, and says, "Strong it is to smell unto, and bitter to taste" (xxvii. 4, Holland's translation). Our old English writers spoke of it under both aspects. It occurs in several recipes of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, as a strong and bitter purgative. Chaucer notices its bitterness only—

Troilus and Cryseide, st. 159.

But the author of the "Remedie of Love," formerly attributed to Chaucer, says—

Shakespeare only mentions the bitter quality.

The two qualities are derived from two very different plants. The fragrant ointment is the product of an Indian shrub, Aquilaria agallochum; and the bitter purgative is from the true Aloes, A. Socotrina, A. vulgaris, and others. These plants were well known in Shakespeare's time, and were grown in England. Turner and Gerard describe them as the Sea Houseleek; and Gerard tells us that they were grown as vegetable curiosities, for "the herbe is alwaies greene, and likewise sendeth forth branches, though it remaine out of the earth, especially if the root be covered with lome, and now and then watered; for so being hanged on the seelings and upper posts of dining-roomes, it will not onely continue a long time greene, but it also groweth and bringeth forth new leaves."[14:1]

FOOTNOTES: