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The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare

Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

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: [10:1] "_Aconita_, thung." Ælfric's "Vocabulary," 10th century. "_Aconitum_, thung." Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary, 11th century. "_Aconita_, thung." "Durham Glossary of the names of Worts," 11th century. The ancient Vocabularies and Glossaries, to which I shall frequently refer, are printed in I. Wright's "Volume of Vocabularies," 1857. II. "Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England," by Rev. O. Cockayne, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 3 vols., 1866. III. "Promptorium Parvulorum," edited by Albert Way, and published by the Camden Society, 3 vols., 1843-65. IV. "Catholicon Anglicum," edited by S. J. Hertage, and published by the Early English Text Society, 1881, and by the Camden Society, 1882. [10:2] This was certainly its name in Shakespeare's time-- "And with the Flower Monk's-hood makes a coole." CUTWODE, _Caltha Poetarum_, 1599 (st. 117). ACORN, _see_ OAK. ALMOND. _Thersites._ The parrot will not do more for an Almond. _Troilus and Cressida_, act v, sc. 2 (193). "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-- "Like to an Almond tree ymounted hye On top of greene Selinis all alone With blossoms brave bedecked daintily; Whose tender locks do tremble every one At everie little breath that under Heaven is blowne." _F. Q._, i. 7, 32. The older English name seems to have been Almande-- "And Almandres gret plente," _Romaunt of the Rose_; "Noyz de l'almande, nux Phyllidis," 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: [12:1] "Plutarch mentions a great drinker of wine who, by the use of bitter almonds, used to escape being intoxicated."--_Flora Domestica_, p. 6. ALOES. And sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears, The Aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears. _A Lover's Complaint_, st. 39. 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-- "Animo corrupta superbo Plus Aloes quam mellis habet" (vi. 180). 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-- "The woful teres that they leten falle As bittre weren, out of teres kynde, For peyne, as is ligne Aloes or galle." _Troilus and Cryseide_, st. 159. But the author of the "Remedie of Love," formerly attributed to Chaucer, says-- "My chambre is strowed with myrrhe and incense With sote savouring Aloes and sinnamone, Breathing an aromaticke redolence." 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: [13:1] Numbers xxiv. 6; Psalms xlv. 8; Proverbs vii. 17; Canticles iv. 14; John xix. 39. [14:1] In the emblems of Camerarius (No. 92) is a picture of a room with an Aloe suspended. ANEMONE. By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd Was melted like a vapour from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up chequer'd with white. Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. _Venus and Adonis_ (1165). Shakespeare does not actually name the Anemone, and I place this passage under that name with some doubt, but I do not know any other flower to which he could be referring. The original legend of the Anemone as given by Bion was that it sprung from the tears of Venus, while the Rose sprung from Adonis' blood-- +aima rodon tiktei, ta de dakrya tan anemônan.+ _Bion Idyll_, i, 66. "Wide as her lover's torrent blood appears So copious flowed the fountain of her tears; The Rose starts blushing from the sanguine dyes, And from her tears Anemones arise." POLWHELE'S _Translation_, 1786. But this legend was not followed by the other classical writers, who made the Anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Theocritus compares the Dog-rose (so called also in his day, +kynosbatos+) and the Anemone with the Rose, and the Scholia comment on the passage thus--"Anemone, a scentless flower, which they report to have sprung from the blood of Adonis; and again Nicander says that the Anemone sprung from the blood of Adonis." The storehouse of our ancestors' pagan mythology was in Ovid, and his well-known lines are-- "Cum flos e sanguine concolor ortus Qualem, quæ; lento celant sub cortice granum Punica ferre solent; brevis est tamen usus in illis, Namque male hærentem, et nimiâ brevitate caducum Excutiunt idem qui præstant nomina, venti,"-- Thus translated by Golding in 1567, from whom it is very probable that Shakespeare obtained his information-- "Of all one colour with the bloud, a flower she there did find, Even like the flower of that same tree, whose fruit in tender rind Have pleasant graines enclosede--howbeit the use of them is short, For why, the leaves do hang so loose through lightnesse in such sort, As that the windes that all things pierce[15:1] with everie little blast Do shake them off and shed them so as long they cannot last."[15:2] I feel sure that Shakespeare had some particular flower in view. Spenser only speaks of it as a flower, and gives no description-- "In which with cunning hand was pourtrahed The love of Venus and her Paramoure, The fayre Adonis, turned to a flowre." _F. Q._, iii, 1, 34. "When she saw no help might him restore Him to a dainty flowre she did transmew." _F. Q._, iii, 1, 38. Ben Jonson similarly speaks of it as "Adonis' flower" (Pan's Anniversary), but with Shakespeare it is different; he describes the flower minutely, and as if it were a well-known flower, "purple chequered with white," and considering that in his day Anemone was supposed to be Adonis' flower (as it was described in 1647 by Alexander Ross in his "Mystagogus Poeticus," who says that Adonis "was by Venus turned into a red flower called Anemone"), and as I wish, if possible, to link the description to some special flower, I conclude that the evidence is in favour of the Anemone. Gerard's Anemone was certainly the same as ours, and the "purple" colour is no objection, for "purple" in Shakespeare's time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright colour, just as _purpureus_ had in Latin,[16:1] which had so wide a range that it was used on the one hand as the epithet of the blood and the poppy, and on the other as the epithet of the swan ("purpureis ales oloribus," Horace) and of a woman's white arms ("brachia purpurea candidiora nive," Albinovanus). Nor was "chequered" confined to square divisions, as it usually is now, but included spots of any size or shape. We have transferred the Greek name of Anemone to the English language, and we have further kept the Greek idea in the English form of "wind-flower." The name is explained by Pliny: "The flower hath the propertie to open but when the wind doth blow, wherefore it took the name Anemone in Greeke" ("Nat. Hist." xxi. 11, Holland's translation). This, however, is not the character of the Anemone as grown in English gardens; and so it is probable that the name has been transferred to a different plant than the classical one, and I think no suggestion more probable than Dr. Prior's that the classical Anemone was the Cistus, a shrub that is very abundant in the South of Europe; that certainly opens its flowers at other times than when the wind blows, and so will not well answer to Pliny's description, but of which the flowers are bright-coloured and most fugacious, and so will answer to Ovid's description. This fugacious character of the Anemone is perpetuated in Sir William Jones' lines ("Poet. Works," i, 254, ed. 1810)-- "Youth, like a thin Anemone, displays His silken leaf, and in a morn decays;" but the lines, though classical, are not true of the Anemone, though they would well apply to the Cistus.[17:1] Our English Anemones belong to a large family inhabiting cold and