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CONTAINING PASSAGES IN WHICH PLANTS AND
FLOWERS ARE NOTICED GENERALLY.*

IN Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 3, the Friar, in a beautiful soliloquy commencing with

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequ❜ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light— alludes to the productiveness of the earth, and speaks of baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers,

Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.
Oh! mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities :
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime's by action dignified.

* All the passages are given at length, and mostly according to the folio of 1623.

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Within the infant rind of this small flower

Poison hath residence, and med'cine power:

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed foes encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;

And, where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

The Friar also, in Act iv. Scene 1, referring to the liquor which Juliet had to take, says,—

Take thou this phial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off:
When, presently, through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease;
No warmth, no breath shall testify thou liv'st;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes; thy eyes' windows fall

Like death when he shuts up the day of life.

Romeo's description of the Apothecary culling of simples' is particularly graphic, and shows the art and calling of the ancient apothecaries.

I do remember an apothecary,

And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted,
In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,-
An alligator stuff'd and other skins

Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves.
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,

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Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered to make up a show.*
Romeo asks the Apothecary for-

A dram of poison, such soon speeding gear
As will disperse itself thro' all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead,
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

One of the powerful narcotic poisons in use at
that time is here referred to, prepared probably
from aconite; and persons were forbidden to have
it in their possession, under pain of death. The
Apothecary alludes to this law in his reply to

Romeo.

In Hamlet, Act i. Scene 5, the Ghost speaks to Hamlet of the leprous distilment which was poured into his ears:

Sleeping within mine orchard,

My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a phial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like aigre droppings into milk,

* See article' Apothecaries' in Beckmann's History of Inventions.'

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The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,

Most lazar like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.

Some commentators suppose that the juice of henbane is here referred to; but the word hebenon might have been originally written enoron, one of the names at that time of Solanum maniacum, called also deadly nightshade, a more powerful poison than henbane.

In Othello, Act i. Scene 3, Iago, in reply to Roderigo, compares the bodies of men to gardens, and their virtues and vices to plants and herbs:

Virtue-a fig! '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; supply 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. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions.

In the Merchant of Venice, Act iv. Scene 1, objects in nature, including trees, are beautifully introduced to illustrate the passions. Anthonio to Bassanio (in presence of Shylock):

I pray you, think. You question with the Jew:
You
may as well go stand upon the beach,
And bid the main flood bate his usual height;

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You may as well use question with the wolf
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines

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wag their high tops and to make no noise
When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven;
You may as well do anything most hard

As seek to soften that (than which what's harder?)
His Jewish heart.

Again, in Cymbeline, Act iv. Scene 2, we have similes full of beauty derived from natural objects. Belarius to Arviragus :—

O thou goddess,

Thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head, and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to the vale.

In the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. Scene 2, female friendship is most beautifully compared to a double cherry, &c. Helena to Hermia :

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry,-seeming parted,
But yet a union in partition,-

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: