The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
have their own effigies in Myrtle, or their husbands in Hornbeam. He is
a Puritan wag, and never fails when he shows his garden to repeat that
passage in the Psalms, 'Thy wife shall be as the fruitful Vine, and thy
children as Olive branches about thy table.'"
B. MANURING, ETC.
_Constable._
And you shall find his vanities forespent
Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
That shall first spring and be most delicate.
_Henry V_, act ii, sc. 4 (36).
The only point that needs notice under this head is that the word
"manure" in Shakespeare's time was not limited to its present modern
meaning. In his day "manured land" generally meant cultured land in
opposition to wild and barren land.[353:1] So Falstaff uses the word--
Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold
blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like
lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled
with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of
fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant.
_2nd Henry IV_, act iv, sc. 3 (126).
And in the same way Iago says--
Either to have it (a garden) sterile with idleness or manured
with industry.
_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (296).
Milton and many other writers used the word in this its original sense;
and Johnson explains it "to cultivate by manual labour," according to
its literal derivation. In one passage Shakespeare uses the word
somewhat in the modern sense--
_Carlisle._ The blood of English shall manure the ground.
_Richard II_, act iv, sc. 1 (137).
But generally he and the writers of that and the next century expressed
the operation more simply and plainly, as "covering with ordure," or as
in the English Bible, "I shall dig about it and dung it."
C. GRAFTING.
(1) _Buckingham._
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants.
_Richard III_, act iii, sc. 7 (127).
(2) _Dauphin._
O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us,
The emptying of our fathers' luxury,
Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,
And overlook their grafters?
_Henry V_, act iii, sc. 5 (5).
(3) _King._
His plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, act i, sc. 2 (53).
(4) _Perdita._
The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our Carnations and streak'd Gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; I care not
To get slips of them.
_Polixenes._
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
_Perdita._
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating Nature.
_Polixenes._
Say there be;
Yet Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
_Perdita._
So it is.
_Polixenes._
Then make your garden rich in Gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
_Perdita._
I'll not put
The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.
_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (81).
The various ways of propagating plants by grafts, cuttings, slips, and
artificial impregnation (all mentioned in the above passages), as used
in Shakespeare's day, seem to have been exactly like those of our own
time, and so they need no further comment.
FOOTNOTES:
[353:1] The Act 31 Eliz. c. 7, enacts that "noe person shall within this
Realme of England make buylde or erect any Buyldinge or Howsinge . . . .
as a Cottage for habitation . . . . unlesse the same person do assigne
and laye to the same Cottage or Buyldinge fower acres of Grounde at the
least . . . to be contynuallie occupied and manured therewith." Gerard's
Chapter on Vines is headed, "Of the manured Vine."
V.--GARDEN ENEMIES.
A. WEEDS.
(1) _Hamlet._
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on it, ah fye! 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 2 (133).
(2) _Titus._
Such withered herbs as these
Are meet for plucking up.
_Titus Andronicus_, act iii, sc. 1 (178).
(3) _York._
Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper,
My Uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow
More than my brother. "Ay," quoth my Uncle Glo'ster,
"Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace;"
And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,
Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
_Richard III_, act ii, sc. 4 (10).
(4) _Queen._
Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden,
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 1 (31).
(5)
Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring,
Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers.
_Lucrece_ (869).
(6) _K. Henry._
Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.
_2nd Henry IV_, act iv, sc. 4 (54).
The weeds of Shakespeare need no remark; they were the same as ours;
and, in spite of our improved cultivation, our fields and gardens are
probably as full of weeds as they were three centuries ago.
B. BLIGHTS, FROSTS, ETC.
(1) _York._
Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud,
And caterpillars eat my leaves away.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 1 (89).
(2) _Montague._
But he, his own affection's counsellor,
Is to himself--I will not say, how true--
But to himself so sweet and close,
So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 1 (153).
(3) _Imogene._
Comes in my father,
And like the tyrannous breathing of the north
Shakes all our buds from growing.
_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 3 (35).
(4) _Bardolph._
A cause on foot
Lives so in hope as in an early spring
We see the appearing buds--which to prove fruit,
Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
That frost will bite them.
_2nd Henry IV_, act i, sc. 3 (37).
(5) _Violet._
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.
_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 4 (113).
(6) _Proteus._
Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.
_Valentine._
And writers say as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime
And all the fair effects of future hopes.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act i, sc. 1 (42).
(7) _Capulet._
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of the field.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 5 (28).
(8) _Lysimachus._
O sir, a courtesy
Which if we should deny, the most just gods
For every graff would send a caterpillar,
And so afflict our province.
_Pericles_, act v, sc. 1 (58).
(9) _Wolsey._
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
_Henry VIII_, act iii, sc. 2 (352).
(10) _Saturninus._
These tidings nip me, and I hang the head
As Flowers with frost, or Grass beat down with storms.
_Titus Andronicus_, act iv, sc. 4 (70).
(11)
No man inveigh against the withered flower,
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd;
Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour,
Is worthy blame.
_Lucrece_ (1254).
(12)
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness everywhere;
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was;
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.[357:1]
_Sonnet_ v.
With this beautiful description of the winter-life of hardy perennial
plants, I may well close the "Plant-lore and Garden-craft of
Shakespeare." The subject has stretched to a much greater extent than I
at all anticipated when I commenced it, but this only shows how large
and interesting a task I undertook, for I can truly say that my
difficulty has been in the necessity for condensing my matter, which I
soon found might be made to cover a much larger space than I have given
to it; for my object was in no case to give an exhaustive account of the
flowers, but only to give such an account of each plant as might
illustrate its special use by Shakespeare.
Having often quoted my favourite authority in gardening matters, old
"John Parkinson, Apothecary, of London," I will again make use of him to
help me to say my last words: "Herein I have spent my time, pains, and
charge, which, if well accepted, I shall think well employed. And thus I
have finished this work, and have furnished it with whatsoever could
bring delight to those that take pleasure in those things, which how
well or ill done I must abide every one's censure; the judicious and
courteous I only respect; and so Farewell."
FOOTNOTES:
[357:1]
"Flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together,
All the hard weather