The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
(Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves)
But thou shalt hear it.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act v, sc. 3 (3).
(6) _Balthasar._
As I did sleep under this Yew tree here,[327:1]
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
_Ibid._ (137).
_See also_ HEBENON, p. 118.
The Yew, though undoubtedly an indigenous British plant, has not a
British name. The name is derived from the Latin _Iva_, and "under this
name we find the _Yew_ so inextricably mixed up with the _Ivy_ that, as
dissimilar as are the two trees, there can be no doubt that these names
are in their origin identical." So says Dr. Prior, and he proceeds to
give a long and very interesting account of the origin of the name. The
connection of Yew with _iva_ and _Ivy_ is still shown in the French
_if_, the German _eibe_, and the Portuguese _iva_. _Yew_ seems to be
quite a modern form; in the old vocabularies the word is variously spelt
iw, ewe,[328:1] eugh-tre,[328:2] haw-tre, new-tre, ew, uhe, and iw.
The connection of the Yew with churchyards and funerals is noticed by
Shakespeare in Nos. 1, 5, and 6, and its celebrated connection with
English bow-making in No. 3, where "double-fatal" may probably refer to
its noxious qualities when living and its use for deadly weapons
afterwards. These noxious qualities, joined to its dismal colour, and to
its constant use in churchyards, caused it to enter into the supposed
charms and incantations of the quacks of the Middle Ages. Yet Gerard
entirely denies its noxious qualities: "They say that the fruit thereof
being eaten is not onely dangerous and deadly unto man, but if birds do
eat thereof it causeth them to cast their feathers and many times to
die--all which I dare boldly affirme is altogether untrue; for when I
was yong and went to schoole, divers of my schoolfellowes, and likewise
my selfe, did eat our fils of the berries of this tree, and have not
only slept under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also,
without any hurt at all, and that not at one time but many times."
Browne says the same in his "Vulgar Errors:" "That Yew and the berries
thereof are harmlesse, we know" (book ii. c. 7). There is no doubt that
the Yew berries are almost if not quite harmless,[328:3] and I find them
forming an element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quoting
as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers submitted. It is
given in a Leech Book of the tenth century or earlier, and is thus
translated by Cockayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are
the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look
downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, cassuck, the
netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh
mallow, fen, mint, dill, lily, attorlothe, pulegium, marrubium, dock,
elder, fel terræ, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolida; pour them over
with ale, add holy water, sing this charm over them thrice [here follow
some long charms which I need not extract]; these charms a man may sing
over a wound" ("Leech Book," iii. 63).
I need say little of the uses of the Yew wood in furniture, nor of the
many grand specimens of the tree which are scattered throughout the
churchyards of England, except to say that "the origin of planting Yew
trees in churchyards is still a subject of considerable perplexity. As
the Yew was of such great importance in war and field sports before the
use of gunpowder was known, perhaps the parsons of parishes were
required to see that the churchyard was capable of supplying bows to the
males of each parish of proper age; but in this case we should scarcely
have been left without some evidence on the matter. Others again state
that the trees in question were intended solely to furnish branches for
use on Palm Sunday"[329:1] (_see_ PALM, p. 195), "while many suppose
that the Yew was naturally selected for planting around churches on
account of its emblematic character, as expressive of the solemnity of
death, while, from its perennial verdure and long duration, it might be
regarded as a pattern of immortality."--_Penny Magazine_, 1843.
A good list of the largest and oldest Yews in England will be found in
Loudon's "Arboretum."
* * * * *
The "dismal Yew" concludes the list of Shakespeare's plants and the
first part of my proposed subject; and while I hope that those readers
who may have gone with me so far have met with some things to interest
them, I hope also they will agree with me that gardening and the love of
flowers is not altogether the modern accomplishment that many of our
gardeners now fancy it to be. Here are two hundred names of plants in
one writer, and that writer not at all writing on horticulture, but only
mentioning plants and flowers in the most incidental manner as they
happened naturally to fall in his way. I should doubt if there is any
similar instance in any modern English writer, and feel very sure that
there is no such instance in any modern English dramatist. It shows how
familiar gardens and flowers were to Shakespeare, and that he must have
had frequent opportunities for observing his favourites (for most surely
he was fond of flowers), not only in their wild and native homes, but in
the gardens of farmhouses and parsonages, country houses, and noblemen's
stately pleasaunces. The quotations that I have been able to make from
the early writers in the ninth and tenth centuries, down to gossiping
old Gerard, the learned Lord Chancellor Bacon, and that excellent old
gardiner Parkinson, all show the same thing, that the love of flowers is
no new thing in England, still less a foreign fashion, but that it is
innate in us, a real instinct, that showed itself as strongly in our
forefathers as in ourselves; and when we find that such men as
Shakespeare and Lord Bacon (to mention no others) were almost proud to
show their knowledge of plants and love of flowers, we can say that such
love and knowledge is thoroughly manly and English.
In the inquiry into Shakespeare's plants I have entered somewhat largely
into the etymological history of the names. I have been tempted into
this by the personal interest I feel in the history of plant names, and
I hope it may not have been uninteresting to my readers; but I do not
think this part of the subject could have been passed by, for I agree
with Johnston: "That there is more interest and as much utility in
settling the nomenclature of our pastoral bards as that of all
herbalists and dry-as-dust botanists" ("Botany of the Eastern Border").
I have also at times entered into the botany and physiology of the
plants; this may have seemed needless to some, but I have thought that
such notices were often necessary to the right understanding of the
plants named, and again I shelter myself under the authority of a
favourite old author: "Consider (gentle readers) what shiftes he shall
be put unto, and how rawe he must needs be in explanation of metaphors,
resemblances, and comparisons, that is ignorant of the nature of herbs
and plants from whence their similitudes be taken, for the inlightening
and garnishing of sentences."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.
I have said that my subject naturally divides itself into two parts,
first, The Plants and Flowers named by Shakespeare; second, His
Knowledge of Gardens and Gardening. The first part is now concluded, and
I go to the second part, which will be very much shorter, and which may
be entitled "The Garden-craft of Shakespeare."
FOOTNOTES:
[327:1] The reading of the folio is "young tree," for "Yew tree."
[328:1]
"An Eu tre (Ewetre); taxus, taximus."--_Catholicon Anglicum._
[328:2]
"The eugh obedient to the bender's will."--SPENSER, _F. Q._, i. 9.
"So far as eughen bow a shaft may send."--_F. Q._, ii. 11-19.
[328:3] There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew
berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed,
and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by
children. (_See_ HEBENON.)
[329:1] "For eucheson we have non Olyfe that bereth grene leves we takon
in stede of hit Hew and Palmes wyth, and beroth abowte in procession and
so this day we callyn palme sonnenday."--_Sermon for "Dominica in ramis
palmarum," Cotton MSS._
PART II.
_THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE._
"The flowers are sweet, the colours fresh and trim."
_Venus and Adonis._
"Retired Leisure
That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure."
MILTON, _Il Penseroso_.
GARDEN-CRAFT.
Any account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" would be very incomplete
if it did not include his "Garden-craft." There are a great many
passages scattered throughout his works, some of them among the most
beautiful that he ever wrote, in which no particular tree, herb, or
flower is mentioned by name, but which show his intimate knowledge of
plants and gardening, and his great affection for them. It is from these
passages, even more than from the passages I have already quoted, in
which particular flowers are named, that we learn how thoroughly his
early country life had influenced and marked his character, and how his
whole spirit was most naturally coloured by it. Numberless allusions to
flowers and their culture prove that his boyhood and early manhood were
spent in the country, and that as he passed through the parks, fields,
and lanes of his native county, or spent pleasant days in the gardens
and orchards of the manor-houses and farm-houses of the neighbourhood,
his eyes and ears were open to all the sights and sounds of a healthy
country life, and he was, perhaps unconsciously, laying up in his memory
a goodly store of pleasant pictures and homely country talk, to be
introduced in his own wonderful way in tragedies and comedies, which,
while often professedly treating of very different times and countries,
have really given us some of the most faithful pictures of the country
life of the Englishman of Queen Elizabeth's time, drawn with all the
freshness and simplicity that can only come from a real love of the
subject.
"Flowers I noted," is his own account of himself (Sonnet xcix.), and
with what love he noted them, and with what carefulness and faithfulness
he wrote of them, is shown in every play he published, and almost in
every act and every scene. And what I said of his notices of particular
flowers is still more true of his general descriptions--that they are
never laboured, or introduced as for a purpose, but that each passage is
the simple utterance of his ingrained love of the country, the natural
outcome of a keen, observant eye, joined to a great power of faithful
description, and an unlimited command of the fittest language. It is
this vividness and freshness that gives such a reality to all
Shakespeare's notices of country life, and which make them such pleasant
reading to all lovers of plants and gardening.
These notices of the "Garden-craft of Shakespeare" I now proceed to
quote; but my quotations in this part will be made on a different plan
to that which I adopted in the account of his "Plant-lore." I shall not
here think it necessary to 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