The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
_Ibid._ (492).
(60)
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase.
_Venus and Adonis._ (3).
(61)
A sudden pale,
Like lawn being spread upon the blushing Rose,
Usurps her cheek.
_Ibid._ (589).
(62)
That beauty's Rose might never die.
_Sonnet_ i.
(63)
Nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.
_Ibid._ cix.
(64)
Rosy lips and cheeks
Within time's bending sickle's compass come.
_Ibid._ cxvi.
(65)
Sweet Rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded,
Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring!
_The Passionate Pilgrim_ (131).
In addition to these many passages, there are perhaps thirty more in
which the Rose is mentioned with reference to the Red and White Roses of
the houses of York and Lancaster. To quote these it would be necessary
to extract an entire act, which is very graphic, but too long. I must,
therefore, content myself with the beginning and the end of the chief
scene, and refer the reader who desires to see it _in extenso_ to "1st
Henry VI.," act ii, sc. 4. The scene is in the Temple Gardens, and
Plantagenet and Somerset thus begin the fatal quarrel--
_Plantagenet._
Let him that is a true-born gentleman
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this Brier pluck a White Rose with me.
_Somerset._
Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a Red Rose from off this Thorn with me.
And Warwick's wise conclusion on the whole matter is--
This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
There are further allusions to the same Red and White Roses in "3rd
Henry VI.," act i, sc. 1 and 2, act ii, sc. 5, and act v, sc. 1; "1st
Henry VI.," act iv, sc. 1; and "Richard III.," act v, sc. 4.
There is no flower so often mentioned by Shakespeare as the Rose, and he
would probably consider it the queen of flowers, for it was so deemed in
his time. "The Rose doth deserve the cheefest and most principall place
among all flowers whatsoever, being not onely esteemed for his beautie,
vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell, but also because it is
the honore and ornament of our English Scepter."--GERARD. Yet the
kingdom of the Rose even then was not undisputed; the Lily was always
its rival (_see_ LILY), for thus sang Walter de Biblesworth in the
thirteenth century--
"En ço verger troveroums les flurs
Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel)
Les herbes ausi pur medicine
La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie)
Liz vaut per royne, Rose pur piz."
But a little later the great Scotch poet Dunbar, who lived from 1460 to
1520, that is, a century before Shakespeare, asserted the dignity of the
Rose as even superior to the Thistle of Scotland.
"Nor hold none other flower in sic dainty
As the fresh Rose of colour red and white;
For if thou dost, hurt is thine honesty,
Considering that no flower is so perfite,
So full of virtue, pleasaunce, and delight,
So full of blissful angelic beauty,
Imperial birth, honour, and dignity."
Volumes have been written, and many more may still be written, on the
delights of the Rose, but my present business is only with the Roses of
Shakespeare. In many of the above passages the Rose is simply the emblem
of all that is loveliest and brightest and most beautiful upon earth,
yet always with the underlying sentiment that even the brightest has its
dark side, as the Rose has its thorns; that the worthiest objects of our
earthly love are at the very best but short-lived; that the most
beautiful has on it the doom of decay and death. These were the lessons
which even the heathen writers learned from their favourite Roses, and
which Christian writers of all ages loved to learn also, not from the
heathen writers, but from the beautiful flowers themselves. "The Rose is
a beautiful flower," said St. Basil, "but it always fills me with sorrow
by reminding me of my sins, for which the earth was doomed to bear
thorns." And it would be easy to fill a volume, and it would not be a
cheerless volume, with beautiful and expressive passages from poets,
preachers, and other authors, who have taken the Rose to point the moral
of the fleeting nature of all earthly things. Herrick in four lines
tells the whole--
"Gather ye Roses while ye may
Old time is still a-flying,
And the same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying."
But Shakespeare's notices of the Rose are not all emblematical and
allegorical. He mentions these distinct sorts of Roses--the Red Rose,
the White Rose, the Musk Rose, the Provençal Rose, the Damask Rose, the
Variegated Rose, the Canker Rose, and the Sweet Briar.
The Canker Rose is the wild Dog Rose, and the name is sometimes applied
to the common Red Poppy.
The Red Rose and the Provençal Rose (No. 13) are no doubt the same, and
are what we now call R. centifolia, or the Cabbage Rose; a Rose that has
been supposed to be a native of the South of Europe, but Dr. Lindley
preferred "to place its native country in Asia, because it has been
found wild by Bieberstein with double flowers, on the eastern side of
Mount Caucasus, whither it is not likely to have escaped from a
garden."[250:1] We do not know when it was introduced into England, but
it was familiar to Chaucer--
"The savour of the Roses swote
Me smote right to the herté rote,
As I hadde alle embawmed be.
* * * * *
Of Roses there were grete wone,
So faire were never in Rone."
_i.e._, in Provence, at the mouth of the Rhone. For beauty in shape and
exquisite fragrance, I consider this Rose to be still unrivalled; but it
is not a fashionable Rose, and is usually found in cottage gardens, or
perhaps in some neglected part of gardens of more pretensions. I believe
it is considered too loose in shape to satisfy the floral critics of
exhibition flowers, and it is only a summer Rose, and so contrasts
unfavourably with the Hybrid Perpetuals. Still, it is a delightful Rose,
delightful to the eye, delightful for its fragrance, and most delightful
from its associations.
The White Rose of York (No. 20) has never been satisfactorily
identified. It was clearly a cultivated Rose, and by some is supposed to
have been only the wild White Rose (_R. arvensis_) grown in a garden.
But it is very likely to have been the Rosa alba, which was a favourite
in English gardens in Shakespeare's time, and was very probably
introduced long before his time, for it is the double variety of the
wild White Rose, and Gerard says of it: "The double White Rose doth grow
wilde in many hedges of Lancashire in great abundance, even as Briers do
with us in these southerly parts, especially in a place of the countrey
called Leyland, and in a place called Roughford, not far from Latham."
It was, therefore, not a new gardener's plant in his time, as has been
often stated. I have little doubt that this is the White Rose of York;
it is not the R. alba of Dr. Lindley's monograph, but the double variety
of the British R. arvensis.
The White Rose has a very ancient interest for Englishmen, for "long
before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the flower had been connected
with one of the most ancient names of our island. The elder Pliny, in
discussing the etymology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may
have been so named from the White Roses which abounded in it--'Albion
insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus, quas mare alluit, vel ob rosas
albas quibus abundat.' Whatever we may think of the etymological
skill displayed in the suggestion . . . we look with almost a new
pleasure on the Roses of our own hedgerows, when regarding them as
descended in a straight line from the 'rosas albas' of those far-off
summers."--_Quarterly Review_, vol. cxiv.
The Damask Rose (No. 5) remains to us under the same name, telling its
own history. There can be little doubt that the Rose came from Damascus,
probably introduced into Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early
travellers in the East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of
the gardens of Damascus. So Sir John Mandeville describes the city--"In
that Cytee of Damasce, there is gret plentee of Welles, and with in the
Cytee and with oute, ben many fayre Gardynes and of dyverse frutes. Non
other Cytee is not lyche in comparison to it, of fayre Gardynes, and of
fayre desportes."--_Voiage and Travaile_, cap. xi. And in our own day
the author of "Eöthen" described the same gardens as he saw them: "High,
high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the
thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop
with the weight of Roses, and load the slow air with their damask
breath. There are no other flowers. The Rose trees which I saw were all
of the kind we call 'damask;' they grow to an immense height and
size."--_Eöthen_, ch. xxvii. It was not till long after the Crusades
that the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt in 1582
says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not
here before, as the Damaske Rose by Doctour Linaker, King Henry the
Seventh and King Henrie the Eight's Physician."--_Voiages_, vol.
ii.[252:1]
As an ornamental Rose the Damask Rose is still a favourite, though
probably the real typical Rosa Damascena is very seldom seen--but it has
been the parent of a large number of hybrid Roses, which the most
critical Rosarian does not reject. The whole family are very
sweet-scented, so that "sweet as Damask Roses" was a proverb, and Gerard
describes the common Damaske as "in other respects like the White Rose;
the especiale difference consisteth in the colour and smell of the
floures, for these are of a pale red colour and of a more pleasant
smell, and fitter for meate or medicine."
The Musk Roses (No. 1) were great favourites with our forefathers. This
Rose (_R. moschata_) is a native of the North of Africa and of Spain,
and has been also found in Nepaul. Hakluyt gives the exact date of its
introduction. "The turkey cockes and hennes," he says, "were brought
about fifty yeres past, the Artichowe in time of King Henry the Eight,
and of later times was procured out of Italy the Muske Rose plant, the
Plumme called the Perdigwena, and two kindes more by the Lord Cromwell
after his travel."--_Voiages_, vol. ii. It is a long straggling Rose,
bearing bunches of single flowers, and is very seldom seen except
against the walls of some old houses. "You remember the great bush at
the corner of the south wall just by the blue drawing-room windows; that
is the old Musk Rose, Shakespeare's Musk Rose, which is dying out
through the kingdom now."--_My Lady Ludlow_, by Mrs. Gaskell. But
wherever it is grown it is highly prized, not so much for the beauty as
for the delicate scent of its flowers. The scent is unlike the scent of
any other Rose, or of any other flower, but it is very pleasant, and not
overpowering; and the plant has the peculiarity that, like the Sweet