1Lecture 37Lecture 37Horticulture and Literature: ShakespeareShakespeare, the greatest writer in English—if not the greatest in any tongue, is also a rich source of horticultural information of the Elizabethan period (1533–1603). The renaissance came late to England but it fl owered with a brilliance that still interests humanists and scientists alike.Shakespeare writes about the human condition in a way that still, despite changes in the language, comes across fresh and pungent. In fact, many of Shakespeare’s horticultural expressions have become cliches.Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Hamlet 1.04.90 There’s small choice in rotten apples. Taming of the Shrew 1.01.135Shakespeare uses the world of imagery-simile, metaphor, analogy to paint his verbal pictures. It is through an analysis of this imagery that Caroline Spurgeon (1931) has found one key to understand Shake-speare the man.The bulk of Shakespeare’s imagery is drawn from everyday things, seen and unseen. There are some bookish facts, some from the imagination, but the main body derives from the real world of nature, from everyday life, from sports. And of all nature’s images, the greatest number is devoted to horticulture. The Bard displays an intimate knowledge, borne undoubtedly from personal observation, about plant growth, propagation, grafting, pruning, manuring, weeding, ripeness, and decay. Almost 200 plants are referred to and there is almost always more keen references to horticulture than, for example, general farming. These allusions to gardens, gardening, botany and plant lore are so abundant that it seems obvious that Shakespeare was, at the least, an expert gardener. A study of horticultural imagery in Shakespeare will lead one to both an appreciation of Shakespeare and an understanding of horticulture in the Elizabethan period as well as of today.Horticultural PlantsO, had the monster seen those lily handsTremble, like aspen leaves upon a luteTitus Andronicus, II(4)44Mine eyes smell Onions, I shall weep anon:Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher.All’s Well that Ends Well, V(3) 321And most dear actors, eat no Onions nor Garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.Midsummer Night’s Dream, IV(2) 42So we grew together,Like to a double Cherry, seeming parted,But yet a union in partition;Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.Midsummer Night’s Dream, III(2)139MedicinalsNot Poppy or Mandragora,Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,William Shakespeare2 Lecture 37Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleepWhich thou ownedst yesterdayOthello, III,(3)330Roots of Hemlok digg’d I’ the dark.Macbeth, IV(1)25I have conveyed aboard, and I have broughtThe oil, the Balsamum, and aqua vitae.Comedy of Errors, IV(1)187Flowers and FloweringWhen I have plucked the Rose,I cannot give it vital growth again,It needs must wither. I’ll smell it on the treeOthello,V(2)86.Though other things grow fair against the sun,Yet fruits that blossom fi rst will fi rst be ripe Othello, II(3) 382The summer’s fl ower is to the summer sweet,Though to itself it only live and die;But if that fl ower 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.Venus and Adonis, (1079)Gardens and Gardeners‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop, and weed up Thyme, sup-ply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.Othello, I(3)322Come my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam’s profession.Hamlet, V(1)34.PruningBut, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,That cannot so much as a blosom yieldIn lie of all thy pains and industry. As You Like It, II(3)63Go bind thou up young dangling apricocks,Which like unruly children make their sireStoop with oppression of their prodigal weight3Lecture 37Give some supportance to the bending twigs.Go thou, and like an executionerCut off the heads of too fast growing sprays,That look too lofty in our commonwealth:All must be even in our governmentRichard II, III(4)Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach’d,Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,Put forth disorder’d twigs…And all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,Defective in their natures, grow to wildnessEven so our houses, and ourselves, and children,Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,The sciences that should become our country…Henry V, V(2)ManuringAs gardeners do with ordure (dung) hide those rootsThat shall fi rst spring and be most delicate.Henry V, II(2), 4GraftingHer royal stock graft with ignoble plantsRichard III, III(7) 127Noble stockWas graft with Crab-tree slip.2nd Henry VI, III(2Z)213Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour we will eat a last year’s Pippin of my own graffi ng, with a dish of Caraways and so forth.2nd Henry IV, V(3).You see, sweet maid, we marryA gentle scion to the wildest stock,and make conceive a bark of baser kindBy bud of nobler race: this is an artWhich does mend nature, change it rather, butThe art itself is nature.Winter’s Tale. IV(4)81.Weeds and InsectsHow weary, stale, fl at, and unprofi tableSeem to me all the uses of this world!Fye on it, ah fye! ‘tis an unweeded garden4 Lecture 37That grows to seed; thinks rank and gross in natureO possess it merely.Hamlet, I(3)133Now ‘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, II(3)31These are my blossoms blasted in the bud,And caterpillars eat my leaves away.2nd Henry VI, III(1)89She never told her love,But let concealment, like a worm’ the bud,Feed on her damask cheek.Twelfth Night, II (4)113Frost Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest fl ower of the fi eld.Romeo and Juliet, IV(1)58This is the state of man: today he puts forthThe tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:And third day comes a frost, a killing frost,And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,And then he falls, as I doHenry VIII,
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