The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

quote all the passages in which he mentions different objects of country life, but I shall content myself with such passages as throw light on his knowledge of horticulture, and which to some extent illustrate the horticulture of his day, and these passages I must arrange under a few general heads. In this way the second part of my subject will be very much shorter than my first, but I have good reasons for hoping that those who have been interested in the long account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" will be equally interested in the shorter account of his "Garden-craft," and will acknowledge that the one would be incomplete without the other. I commence with those passages which treat generally of—

I.—FLOWERS, BLOSSOMS, AND BUDS. (1) Quickly. Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Merry Wives of Windsor, act v, sc. 5 (77).   (2) Oberon. She his hairy temples then had rounded
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
And that same dew, which sometime in the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes,
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv, sc. 1 (56).   (3) Gaunt. Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,
The flowers fair ladies. Richard II, act i, sc. 3 (288).   (4) Katharine. When I am dead, good wench,
Let me be used with honour; strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave. Henry VIII, act iv, sc. 2 (167).   (5) Ophelia (sings). White his shroud as the mountain snow
Larded with sweet flowers,
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers. Hamlet, act iv, sc. 5 (35).   (6) Queen. Whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers. Cymbeline, act i, sc. 5 (1).   (7) Song. Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings,
And Phœbus 'gins to rise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies. Ibid., act ii, sc. 3 (21).   (8) Arviragus. With fairest flowers,
While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Ibid., act iv, sc. 2 (218).   (9) Belarius. Here's a few flowers; but 'bout midnight, more;
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves. Upon their faces.
You were as flowers, now withered; even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strew. Ibid. (283).   (10) Juliet. This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 2 (121).   (11) Titania. An odorous chaplet of sweet summer-buds. Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii, sc. 1 (110).   (12) Friar Laurence. I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's Nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 3 (7).   (13) Iago. Though other things grow fair against the sun,
Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe. Othello, act ii, sc. 3 (382).   (14) Dumain. Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair
Playing in the wanton air;
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, can passage find. Love's Labour's Lost, act iv, sc. 3 (102).   (15)   Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time. Venus and Adonis (131).   (16)   The flowers are sweet, the colours fresh and trim,
But true-sweet beauty lived and died with him. Venus and Adonis (1079).   (17)   Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. Sonnet xviii.   (18)   With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That Heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. Ibid. xxi.   (19)   The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. Ibid. xciv.   (20)   Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew. Ibid. xcviii.

"Of all the vain assumptions of these coxcombical times, that which arrogates the pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest. True, our conservatories are full of the choicest plants from every clime: we ripen the Grape and the Pine-apple with an art unknown before, and even the Mango, the Mangosteen, and the Guava are made to yield their matured fruits; but the real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity, and strangeness, and variety." So, nearly forty years ago, wrote the author of "The Poetry of Gardening," a pleasant, though somewhat fantastic essay, first published in the "Carthusian," and afterwards re-published in Murray's "Reading for the Rail," in company with an excellent article from the "Quarterly" by the same author under the title of "The Flower Garden;" and I quote it because this "vain assumption" is probably stronger and more widespread now than when that article was written. We often hear and read accounts of modern gardening in which it is coolly assumed, and almost taken for granted, that the science of horticulture, and almost the love of flowers, is a product of the nineteenth century. But the love of flowers is no new taste in Englishmen, and the science of horticulture is in no way a modern science. We have made large progress in botanical science during the present century, and our easy communications with the whole habitable globe have brought to us thousands of new and beautiful plants in endless varieties; and we have many helps in gardening that were quite unknown to our forefathers. Yet there were brave old gardeners in our forefathers' times, and a very little acquaintance with the literature of the sixteenth century will show that in Shakespeare's time there was a most healthy and manly love of flowers for their own sake, and great industry and much practical skill in gardening. We might, indeed, go much further back than the fifteenth century, and still find the same love and the same skill. We have long lists of plants grown in times before the Conquest, with treatises on gardening, in which there is much that is absurd, but which show a practical experience in the art, and which show also that the gardens of those days were by no means ill-furnished either with fruit or flowers. Coming a little later, Chaucer takes every opportunity to speak with a most loving affection for flowers, both wild and cultivated, and for well-kept gardens; and Spenser's poems show a familiar acquaintance with them, and a warm admiration for them. Then in Shakespeare's time we have full records of the gardens and gardening which must have often met his eye; and we find that they were not confined to a few fine places here and there, but that good gardens were the necessary adjunct to every country house, and that they were cultivated with a zeal and a skill that would be a credit to any gardener of our own day. In Harrison's description of "England in Shakespeare's Youth," recently published by the new Shakespeare Society, we find that Harrison himself, though only a poor country parson, "took pains with his garden, in which, though its area covered but 300ft. of ground, there was 'a simple' for each foot of ground, no one of them being common or usually to be had." About the same time Gerard's Catalogues show that he grew in his London garden more than a thousand species of hardy plants; and Lord Bacon's famous "Essay on Gardens" not only shows what a grand idea of gardening he had himself, but also that this idea was not Utopian, but one that sprang from personal acquaintance with stately gardens, and from an innate love of gardens and flowers. Almost at the same time, but a little later, we come to the celebrated "John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, the King's Herbarist," whose "Paradisus Terrestris," first published in 1629, is indeed "a choise garden of all sorts of rarest flowers." His collection of plants would even now be considered an excellent collection, if it could be brought together, while his descriptions and cultural advice show him to have been a thorough practical gardener, who spoke of plants and gardens from the experience of long-continued hard work amongst them. And contemporary with him was Milton, whose numerous descriptions of flowers are nearly all of cultivated plants, as he must have often seen them in English gardens.

And so we are brought to the conclusion that in the passages quoted above in which Shakespeare speaks so lovingly and tenderly of his favourite flowers, these expressions are not to be put down to the fancy of the poet, but that he was faithfully describing what he daily saw or might have seen, and what no doubt he watched with that carefulness and exactness which could only exist in conjunction with a real affection for the objects on which he gazed, "the fresh and fragrant flowers," "the pretty flow'rets," "the sweet flowers," "the beauteous flowers," "the sweet summer buds," "the blossoms passing fair," "the darling buds of May."

II.—GARDENS. (1) King (reads). It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted Garden. Loves Labour's Lost, act i, sc. 1 (248).   (2) Isabella. He hath a Garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd;
And to that Vineyard is a planched gate
That makes his opening with this bigger key:
The other doth command a little door
Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads. Measure for Measure, act iv, sc. 1 (28).   (3) Antonio. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine. Much Ado About Nothing, act i, sc. 2 (9).   (4) Iago. Our bodies are our Gardens, &c. (See Hyssop.) Othello, act i, sc. 3 (323).   (5) 1st Servant. Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing as in a model our firm estate,
When our sea-walled Garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruin'd,
Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars? Richard II, act iii, sc. 4 (40).

The flower-gardens of Shakespeare's time were very different to the flower-gardens of our day; but we have so many good descriptions of them in books and pictures that we have no difficulty in realizing them both in their general form and arrangement. I am now speaking only of the flower-gardens; the