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 PART TWO

THE FLOWERS OF SHAKESPEARE

Spring
"THE SWEET O' THE YEAR"
 I
Primroses, Cowslips, and Oxlips

P RIMROSE (Primula vulgaris). English poets have always regarded

the primrose as the first flower of spring—the true Flor di prima
vera. This name calls to mind Botticelli's enchanting Primevera that
hangs in the Uffizi, in which the sward is dotted with spring flowers
that seem to have burst into blossom beneath the footsteps of
Venus and her three Graces—those lovely ladies of the Italian
Renaissance, clad in light, fluttering draperies. This decorative
picture expresses not only the joy and beauty of newly-awakened
spring, but something much deeper, something that the painter did
not realize himself; and this was what the Italian Renaissance was
destined to mean to all the world: a New Birth of beauty in the arts
and a new era of human sympathy for mankind.
Sandro Botticelli, whom we may appropriately call Flor di prima vera
among painters, was as unaware of his mission in art as the
primroses that come into being at the call of a new day of spring
sunshine from a long dark winter's sleep in a soil of frozen stiffness.
Something of the tender and wistful beauty of early spring—her faint
dreams and soft twilights, her languid afternoons and her veiled
nights, when pale stars tremble through gray mists and when warm
rains softly kiss the drowsy earth—Botticelli has put into his
enchanting spring idyl; and this same wistful, half-drowsy, and
evanescent beauty is characteristic of the primrose.

Primrose, first born child of Ver,

Merry Springtime's harbinger,
With her bells dim
is a perfect and sympathetic description of the flower in "The Two
Noble Kinsmen."[20]
[20] Act I, Scene I.

Observe that the bells of the primrose are "dim"—pale in hue—

because the earth is not sufficiently awake for bright colors or for
joyful chimes—so the color is faint and the sound is delicate. Trees
are now timidly putting forth tender leaves, buds peer cautiously
from the soil, and few birds sing; for leaves, buds, and birds know
full well that winter is lurking in the distance and that rough winds
occasionally issue from the bag of Boreas. The time has not yet
come for "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain" and for choirs of
feathered songsters. Yet all the more, because of its bold daring and
its modest demeanor, the primrose deserves the enthusiastic
welcome it has always received from poets and flower lovers.
"The primrose," writes Dr. Forbes Watson, "seems the very flower of
delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few
plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a
dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing and the first bees
humming and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April
woods. And it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking
cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very
opening of the year, if the weather will permit.
"The flower is of a most unusual color, a pale, delicate yellow,
slightly tinged with green. And the better flowers impress us by a
peculiar paleness, not dependent upon any feebleness of hue, which
we always find unpleasing, but rather upon the exquisite softness of
their tone. And we must not overlook the little round stigma, that
green and translucent gem, which forms the pupil of the eye, and is
surrounded by a deeper circle of orange which helps it to shine forth
more clearly. Many flowers have a somewhat pensive look; but in the
pensiveness of the primrose there is a shade of melancholy—a
melancholy which awakens no thought of sadness and does but give
interest to the pale, sweet, inquiring faces which the plant upturns
towards us.
"In the primrose, as a whole, we cannot help being struck by an
exceeding softness and delicacy; there is nothing sharp, strong, or
incisive; the smell is 'the faintest and most ethereal perfume,' as
Mrs. Stowe has called it in her 'Sunny Memories,' though she was
mistaken in saying that it disappears when we pluck the flower. It is
meant to impress us as altogether soft and yielding. One of the most
beautiful points in the primrose is the manner in which the paleness
of the flowers is taken up by the herbage. This paleness seems to
hang about the plant like a mystery, for though the leaves of the
primrose may at times show a trace of the steady paleness of the
cowslip, it is more usually confined to their undersurfaces and the
white flower-stalks with their clothing of down. And when we are
looking at the primrose one or other of these downy, changeful
portions is continually coming into view, so that we get a feeling as if
there hung about the whole plant a clothing of soft, evanescent
mist, thickening about the center of the plant and the undersurfaces
of the leaves which are less exposed to the sun. And then we reach
one of the main expressions of the primrose. When we look at the
pale, sweet flowers, and the soft-toned green of the herbage,
softened further here and there by that uncertain mist of down, the
dryness of the leaf and fur enters forcibly into our impression of the
plant, giving a sense of extreme delicacy and need of shelter, as if it
were some gentle creature which shrinks from exposure to the
weather."
 CARNATIONS AND GILLIFLOWERS; PRIMROSES AND COWSLIPS; AND DAFFODILS: FROM
PARKINSON

The Greeks associated the idea of melancholy with this flower. They
had a story of a handsome youth, son of Flora and Priapus, whose
betrothed bride died. His grief was so excessive that he died, too,
and the gods than changed his body into a primrose.
In Shakespeare's time, the primrose was also associated with early
death; and it is one of the flowers thrown upon the corse of Fidele,
whose lovely, wistful face is compared to the "pale primrose." Thus
Arviragus exclaims as he gazes on the beautiful youth, Fidele, the
assumed name of Imogen in disguise:

I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack

The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose.[21]

Perdita, in "The Winter's Tale,"[22] mentions

Pale primroses that die unmarried

Ere they can behold bright Phœbus in his strength.

Shakespeare appreciated the delicate hue and perfume of this

flower. He seems to be alluding to both qualities when he makes
Hermia touch Helena's memory by the following words:

And in the wood, where often you and I

Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie.[23]

Other English poets speak of the flower as "the pale," or "the dim."
Milton writes:

Now the bright star, day's harbinger

Comes dancing from the East and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who, from her green lap, throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

And again, Thomas Carew:

Ask me why I send you here

The firstling of the infant year?
Ask me why I send to you
This Primrose, all bepearled with dew?
I straight whisper in your ears:
The sweets of Love are wash'd with tears

Ask me why this flower doth show

So yellow, green and sickly, too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And, bending, yet it doth not break?
I will answer: these discover
What doubts and fears are in a lover.

[21] "Cymbeline"; Act IV, Scene II.

[22] Act IV, Scene III.
[23] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act I, Scene I.

The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty

species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All
members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their
peculiar charm.
Parkinson writes:
"We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country
breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often
furnished into divers countries to their good content.
"All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green
leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small
stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green.
The name of Primula veris, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on
those that I distinguish for Paralyses, or Cowslips. All these plants
are called most usually in Latin Primulæ veris, Primulæ pretenses
and Primulæ silvarum, because they shew by their flowering the new
Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first
Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as Herba
Paralysis, Arthritica, Herba Sancti Petri, Claues Sancti Petri,
Verbasculum odoratum, Lunaria arthritica, Phlomis, Alisma silvarum
and Alismatis alterum genus. Some have distinguished them by
calling the Cowslips Primula Veris Elatior, that is the Taller Primrose,
and the other Humilis, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose.
"Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall
diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the
Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears[24] are, which
hath caused the names of Arthritica Paralysis and Paralytica to be
given them."
[24] Auriculas.
Tusser in his "Husbandry" includes the primrose among the seeds
and herbs of the kitchen; and Lyte says that "the cowslips, primroses
and oxlips are now used daily amongst other pot-herbs, but in physic
there is no great account made of them." "The old name was
Primerolles," Dr. Prior notes in his quaint book on flowers. "Primerole
as an outlandish, unintelligible word was soon familiarized into
Primerolles and this into Primrose." The name was also written
primrolles and finally settled down into primrose. Chaucer wrote
primerole, a name derived from the French Primeverole, meaning,
like the Italian Flor di prima vera, the first spring flower.
COWSLIP (Paralysis vulgaris pratensis). The cowslip is an
ingratiating little flower, not so aloof as its cousin the primrose, and
not at all melancholy. In the popular lore of Shakespeare's time the
cowslip was associated with fairies. In many places it was known as
"fairy cups." For this reason Shakespeare makes Ariel lie in a
cowslip's bell when the fay is frightened by the hooting of owls, or
tired of swinging merrily in "the blossom that hangs on the bough."
One of the duties of Titania's little maid of honor was "to hang a
pearl in every cowslip's ear"; and this gay little fairy informs Puck of
the important place cowslips hold in the court of the tiny Queen
Titania:

The cowslips tall her pensioners be,

In their gold coats spots you see:
These be rubies, fairy favors,
In these freckles live their savors.[25]

[25] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene I.

To appreciate the meaning of this comparison, it must be
remembered that the "pensioners" of Queen Elizabeth's court were a
guard of the tallest and handsomest men to be found in the whole
kingdom, men, moreover, who were in the pride of youth, and scions
of the most distinguished families. Their dress was of extraordinary
elegance and enriched heavily with gold embroidery. Hence, "gold
coats" for the cowslips. Here and there jewels sparkled and glistened
on the pensioners' coats. Hence rubies—fairy favors—favors from
the Queen! The pensioners also wore pearls in their ears, like
Raleigh and Leicester and other noblemen. Hence the fairy had to
"hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." An idea, too, of the size of
Titania and her elves is given when the cowslips are considered
"tall," and tall enough to be the body-guard of Queen Titania. This
was a pretty little allusion to Queen Elizabeth and her court, which
the audience that gathered to see the first representation of "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" did not fail to catch.
We get a sidelight on the importance of the pensioners in "The
Merry Wives of Windsor"[26] when Dame Quickly tells Falstaff a great
cock-and-bull story about the visitors who have called on Mistress
Ford. "There have been knights and lords and gentlemen with their
coaches, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly (all
musk) and so rushling, I warrant you in silk and gold; and yet there
has been earls, and, what is more, pensioners!" Shakespeare also
speaks of "the freckled cowslip" in "Henry V,"[27] when the Duke of
Burgundy refers to

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

The freckled cowslip.

All poets love the flower.

In the language wherewith spring

Letters cowslips on the hill,

writes Tennyson—a charming fancy!

Sydney Dobell has a quaint flower song containing this verse:

Then came the cowslip

Like a dancer in the fair,
She spread her little mat of green
And on it dancèd she,
With a fillet bound about her brow,
A fillet round her happy brow,
A golden fillet round her brow,
And rubies in her hair.

[26] Act II, Scene II.

[27] Act V, Scene II.
Never mind if country dancers rarely wear rubies; the idea is pretty
and on Shakespeare's authority we know that rubies do gleam in the
cup of the cowslip, as he has told us through the lips of the fairy.
With great appreciation of the beauty of the flower he has Jachimo's
description:

Cinque-spotted like the crimson drops

In the bottom of a cowslip.[28]

[28] "Cymbeline"; Act II, Scene II.

Most sympathetically did Dr. Forbes Watson, when lying on a bed of
fatal illness, put into words what many persons have felt regarding
this flower:
"Few of our wild flowers give intenser pleasure than the cowslip, yet
perhaps there is scarcely any whose peculiar beauty depends so
much upon locality and surroundings. There is a homely simplicity
about the cowslip, much like that of the daisy, though more pensive,
—the quiet, sober look of an unpretending country girl, not strikingly
beautiful in feature or attire, but clean and fresh as if new bathed in
milk and carrying us away to thoughts of daisies, flocks and
pasturage and the manners of a simple, primitive time, some golden
age of shepherd-life long since gone by. And more; in looking at the
cowslip we are always most forcibly struck by its apparent
wholesomeness and health. This wholesomeness is quite
unmistakable. It belongs even to the smell so widely different from
the often oppressive perfume of other plants, as lilies, narcissuses,
or violets. Now just such a healthy milk-fed look, just such a sweet,
healthy odor is what we find in cows—an odor which breathes
around them as they sit at rest in the pasture. The 'lips,' of course, is
but a general resemblance to the shape of the petals and suggests
the source of the fragrance. The cowslip, as we have said, is a
singularly healthy-looking plant, indeed, nothing about it is more
remarkable. It has none of the delicacy and timidity of the primrose.
All its characters are well and healthily pronounced. The paleness is
uniform, steady, and rather impresses us as whiteness; and the
yellow of the cup is as rich as gold. The odor is not faint, but
saccharine and luscious. It does not shrink into the sheltered covert,
but courts the free air and sunshine of the open fields; and instead
of its flowers peeping timidly from behind surrounding leaves, it
raises them boldly on a stout, sufficient stalk, the most conspicuous
object in the meadow. Its poetry is the poetry of common life, but of
the most delicious common life that can exist. The plant is in some
respects careless to the verge of disorder; and you should note that
carelessness well, till you feel the force of it, as especially in the
lame imperfection of the flower buds, only, perhaps half of them well
developed and the rest dangling all of unequal lengths. Essentially
the cowslip and the primrose are only the same plant in two
different forms, the one being convertible into the other. The
primrose is the cowslip of the woods and sheltered lanes; the
cowslip is the primrose of the fields."
The name cowslip is not derived from the lips of the cow, but,
according to Skeat, the great Anglo-Saxon authority, it comes from
an Anglo-Saxon word meaning dung and was given to the plant
because it springs up in meadows where cows are pastured.
"The common field Cowslip," says Parkinson, "I might well forbear to
set down, being so plentiful in the fields; but because many take
delight in it and plant it in their gardens, I will give you the
description of it here. It hath divers green leaves, very like unto the
wild Primrose, but shorter, rounder, stiffer, rougher, more crumpled
about the edges and of a sadder green color, every one standing
upon his stalk which is an inch or two long. Among the leaves rise
up divers long stalks, a foot or more high, bearing at the top many
fair, yellow, single flowers with spots of a deep yellow at the bottom
of each leaf, smelling very sweet.
"In England they have divers names according to several countries,
as Primroses, Cowslips, Oxlips, Palsieworts and Petty Mullins. The
Frantic Fantastic, or Foolish, Cowslip in some places is called by
country people Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback, which is a usual name
given by them to many other plants, as Daisies, Marigolds, etc., if
they be strange or fantastical, differing in form from the ordinary
kind of the single ones. The smallest are usually called through all
the North Country Birds' Eyen, because of the small yellow circle in
the bottoms of the flowers resembling the eye of a bird."

OXLIP (Primula eliator). The oxlip combines the qualities of

primrose and cowslip. "These two plants," writes a botanist, "appear
as divergent expressions of a simple type, the cowslip being a
contracted form of primrose, the sulphur yellow and the fine tawny,
watery rays of the latter brightened into well defined orange spots.
In the oxlip these characters anastomose."
Thus, partaking of the character of primrose and cowslip, the oxlip is
considered by some authorities a hybrid. "The oxlip and the
polyanthus," says Dr. Forbes Watson, "with its tortoiseshell blossoms,
are two of the immediate forms; the polyanthus being a great
triumph of the gardener's art, a delightful flower, quite a new
creation and originally produced by cultivation of the primrose." In
England the oxlip is found in woods, fields, meadows, and under
hedges. Though a spring flower it lingers into summer and is found
in company with the nodding violet, wild thyme, and luscious
eglantine on the bank where Titania loved to sleep lulled to rest by
song.[29] Perdita speaks of "bold oxlips" ("The Winter's Tale," Act iv,
Scene iii); and compared With the primrose and cowslip the flower
deserves the adjective.
"Oxlips in their cradles growing," in the song in "The Two Noble
Kinsmen,"[30] which Shakespeare wrote with John Fletcher, shows
great knowledge of the plant, for the root-leaves of the oxlip are
shaped like a cradle.
Parkinson writes: "Those are usually called oxlips whose flowers are
naked, or bare, without husks to contain them, being not so sweet
as the cowslip, yet have they some little scent, although the Latin
name doth make them to have none."
[29] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.
[30] Act I, Scene I.
 II
"Daffodils that Come Before the
Swallow Dares"
DAFFODIL (Narcissus pseudo-narcissus).
When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

Is the opening verse that Autolycus sings so gaily in "The Winter's

Tale."[31] The daffodil was "carefully nourished up" in Elizabethan
gardens, as the saying went. Before Shakespeare's time a great
number of daffodils had been introduced into England from various
parts of the Continent. Gerard describes twenty-four different
species, "all and every one of them in great abundance in our
London gardens."
[31] Act IV, Scene II.

There were many varieties both rare and ordinary. Parkinson

particularly distinguishes the true daffodils, or narcissus, from the
"Bastard Daffodils," or pseudo narcissus; and he gives their
differences as follows:
"It consisteth only in the flower and chiefly in the middle cup, or
chalice; for that we do, in a manner only, account those to be
Pseudo Narcissus, Bastard Daffodils, whose middle cup is altogether
as long, and sometimes a little longer than, the outer leaves that do
encompass it, so that it seemeth rather like a trunk, or a long nose,
than a cup or chalice, such as almost all the Narcissi, or true
Daffodils, have. Of the Bastard tribe Parkinson gives the great yellow
Spanish Daffodil; the Mountain Bastard of divers kinds; the early
straw-colored; the great white Spanish; the greatest Spanish white;
the two lesser White Spanish; our common English wild Bastard
Daffodil; the six-cornered; the great double yellow, or John
Tradescant's great Rose Daffodil; Mr. Wilmer's great double Daffodil;
the great double yellow Spanish, or Parkinson's Daffodil; the great
double French Bastard; the double English Bastard, or Gerard's
double Daffodil; the great white Bastard Rush Daffodil, or Junquilia;
the greater yellow Junquilia; and many others."
Then he adds:
"The Pseudo narcissus Angliens vulgaris is so common in all
England, both in copses, woods and orchards, that I might well
forbear the description thereof. It hath three, or four, grayish leaves,
long and somewhat narrow, among which riseth up the stalk about a
span high, or little higher, bearing at the top, out of a skinny husk
(as all other Daffodils have), one flower, somewhat large, having the
six leaves that stand like wings, of a pale yellow color, and the long
trunk in the middle of a faire yellow with the edges, or brims, a little
crumpled, or uneven. After the flower is past, it beareth a round
head, seeming three square, containing round black seed."
Shakespeare knew all of these varieties very well and had many of
them in mind when he wrote the beautiful lines for Perdita, who
exclaims:

O Proserpina!
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lettst fall
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.[32]

[32] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Much has been written about this description of the daffodils; and it
is generally thought that "to take the winds of March with beauty"
means to charm, or captivate, the wild winds with their loveliness. I
do not agree with this idea, and venture to suggest that as the
daffodils sway and swing in the boisterous March winds with such
infinite grace and beauty, bending this way and that, they "take the
winds with beauty," just as a graceful dancer is said to take the
rhythmic steps of the dance with charming manner.
We get a hint for this also in Wordsworth's poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of yellow daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky-Way
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet would not be but gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought

For oft when on my couch I lie

In vacant, or in pensive, mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
GARDENERS AT WORK, SIXTEENTH CENTURY
 GARDEN PLEASURES, SIXTEENTH CENTURY

No one can read this poem without feeling that the dancing daffodils
"take the winds of March with beauty." The very name of the daffodil
touches our imagination. It carries us to the Elysian Fields, for the
ancient Greeks pictured the meads of the blessed as beautifully
golden and deliciously fragrant with asphodels. The changes ring
through asphodel, affodile, affodyl, finally reaching daffodil. Then
there is one more quaint and familiar name and personification,

Daffy-down-dilly that came up to town

In a white petticoat and a green gown.

The idea of daffodil as a rustic maiden was popular in folk-lore and

poetry. The feeling is so well expressed in Michael Drayton's
sprightly eclogue called "Daffodil" that it forms a natural complement
to the happy song of care-free Autolycus just quoted. This Pastoral
captured popular fancy; and it is just as fresh and buoyant as it was
when it was written three hundred years ago. Two shepherds, Batte
and Gorbo, meet:
Batte

Gorbo, as thou camst this way,

By yonder little hill,
Or, as thou through the fields didst stray,
Sawst thou my Daffodil?

She's in a frock of Lincoln green,

Which color likes the sight;
And never hath her beauty seen
But through a veil of white.

Gorbo

Thou well describst the daffodil;

It is not full an hour
Since by the spring, near yonder hill,
I saw that lovely flower.

Batte

Yet my fair flower thou didst not meet,

No news of her didst bring;
And yet my Daffodil's more sweet
Than that by yonder spring.

Gorbo

I saw a shepherd that doth keep

In yonder field of lilies
Was making (as he fed his sheep)
A wreath of daffodillies.

Batte
 Yet, Gorbo, thou deludst me still,
My flower thou didst not see;
For know my pretty Daffodil
Is worn of none but me.

To show itself but near her feet

No lily is so bold,
Except to shade her from the heat,
Or keep her from the cold.

Gorbo

Through yonder vale as I did pass

Descending from the hill,
I met a smirking bonny lass;
They call her Daffodil,

Whose presence as along she went

The pretty flowers did greet,
As though their heads they downward bent
With homage to her feet,

And all the shepherds that were nigh

From top of every hill
Unto the valleys loud did cry:
There goes sweet Daffodil!

Batte

Ay, gentle shepherd, now with joy

Thou see my flocks doth fill;
That's she alone, kind shepherd boy,
Let's us to Daffodil!

The flower was also called jonquil, saffron lily, Lent lily and
narcissus. It was the large yellow narcissus, known as the Rose of
Sharon, so common in Palestine, of which Mohammed said: "He that
hath two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for a flower of the
narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, but narcissus is the food
of the soul."
Narcissus, the most beautiful youth of Bœotia, was told that he
would live happily until he saw his own face. Loved by the nymphs,
and particularly Echo, he rejected their advances for he was immune
to love and admiration. One day, however, he beheld himself in a
stream and became so fascinated with his reflection that he pined to
death gazing at his own image.

For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,

Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn,
And now the sister nymphs prepare his urn;
When looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk with yellow blossoms crowned.

In the center of the cup are to be found the tears of Narcissus!

Because the flower was consecrated to Ceres and to the Underworld
and to the Elysian Fields, the daffodil was one of the flowers that
Proserpine was gathering when "dusky Dis" carried her off—and the
myth also hints that the Earth purposely brought the asphodel forth
from the Underworld to entice the unsuspecting daughter of Ceres.
Sophocles associates the daffodil with the garlands of great
goddesses: "And ever, day by day, the narcissus with its beauteous
clusters, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, bursts into
bloom by heaven's dew."[33]
[33] Œdipus Coloneus.
 GARDEN IN MACBETH'S CASTLE OF CAWDOR

The delightful Dr. Forbes Watson writes of the daffodil like a painter,
with accurate observation and bright palette:
"In the daffodil the leaves and stems are of a full glaucous green, a
color not only cool and refreshing in itself, but strongly suggestive of
water, the most apparent source of freshness and constituting a
most delicious groundwork for the bright, lively yellow of the
blossoms. Now what sort of spathe would be likely to contribute best
to this remarkable effect of the flower? Should the colors be
unusually striking or the size increased, or what? Strange to say, in
both Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye (Poet's Narcissus) we find the
spathe dry and withered, shrivelled up like a bit of thin brown paper
and clinging round the base of the flowers. We cannot overlook it,
and most assuredly we were never meant to do so. Nothing could
have been more beautifully ordered than this contrast, there being
just sufficient to make us appreciate more fully that abounding
freshness of life.
"It is a plant which affords a most beautiful contrast, a cool, watery
sheet of leaves with bright, warm flowers, yellow and orange,
dancing over the leaves like meteors over a marsh. The leaves look
full of watery sap, which is the life blood of plants and prime source
of all their freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy child look
plump and rosy from the warm blood circulating within.
"In its general expression the Poet's Narcissus seems a type of
maiden purity and beauty, yet warmed by a love-breathing
fragrance; and yet what innocence in the large soft eye which few
can rival among the whole tribe of flowers. The narrow, yet vivid
fringe of red so clearly seen amidst the whiteness suggests again the
idea of purity and gushing passion—purity with a heart which can
kindle into fire."
 III
"Daisies Pied and Violets Blue"
DAISY (Bellis perennis). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy.
With "violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds
of every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful
spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost."[34] Shakespeare also uses this
flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of Lucrece in
"The Rape of Lucrece":[35]

Without the bed her other fair hand was

On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass.

The daisy is among the flowers in the fantastic garlands that poor
Ophelia wove before her death.[36]
[34] Act V, Scene II.
[35] Stanza 57.
[36] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII.
The botanical name Bellis shows the origin of the flower. Belides, a
beautiful Dryad, trying to escape the pursuit of Vertumnus, god of
gardens and orchards, prayed to the gods for help; and they
changed her into the tiny flower. In allusion to this Rapin wrote:

When the bright Ram, bedecked with stars of gold,

Displays his fleece the Daisy will unfold,
To nymphs a chaplet and to beds a grace,
Who once herself had borne a virgin's face.
The daisy was under the care of Venus. It has been beloved by
English poets ever since Chaucer sang the praises of the day's eye—
daisy. Chaucer tells us, in what is perhaps the most worshipful poem
ever addressed to a flower, that he always rose early and went out
to the fields, or meadows, to pay his devotions to this "flower of
flowers," whose praises he intended to sing while ever his life lasted,
and he bemoaned the fact, moreover, that he had not words at his
command to do it proper reverence.
Next to Chaucer in paying homage to the daisy comes Wordsworth
with his

A nun demure, of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court;
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
Queen in crown of rubies drest,
A starveling in a scanty vest,
Are all, as seems to suit the best
My appellations.

A little cyclops with one eye

Staring to threaten and defy
That thought comes next—and instantly
The freak is over,
The shape will vanish—and behold,
A silver shield with boss of gold
That spreads itself some fairy bold
In fight to cover.

Bright flower! for by that name at last

When all my reveries are past
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet, silent creature
That breathst with me the sun and air,
Do thou as thou art wont repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature.
"Daisies smell-less yet most quaint" is a line from the flower-song in
"The Two Noble Kinsmen," written by John Fletcher and
Shakespeare.[37]
[37] Act I, Scene I.

Milton speaks of

Meadows trim with daisies pied

and Dryden pays a tribute to which even Chaucer would approve:

And then a band of flutes began to play,

To which a lady sang a tirelay;
And still at every close she would repeat
The burden of the song—"The Daisy is so sweet!
The Daisy is so sweet!"—when she began
The troops of Knights and dames continued on.

The English daisy is "The wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," as

Burns has described it, and must not be confused with the daisy that
powders the fields and meadows in our Southern States with a snow
of white blossoms supported on tall stems. This daisy, called
sometimes the moon-daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum), is
known in England as the midsummer daisy and ox-eye. In France it
is called marguerite and paquerette. Being a midsummer flower, it is
dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It is also associated with St.
Margaret and Mary Magdalen, and from the latter it derives the
names of maudlin and maudelyne. As Ophelia drowned herself in
midsummer the daisies that are described in her wreath are most
probably marguerites and not the "day's eye" of Chaucer.
Parkinson does not separate daisies very particularly. "They are
usually called in Latin," he tells us, "Bellides and in English Daisies.
Some of them Herba Margarita and Primula veris, as is likely after
the Italian names of Marguerita and Flor di prima vera gentile. The
French call them Paquerettes and Marguerites; and the fruitful sort,
or those that have small flowers about the middle one,
Margueritons. Our English women call them Jack-an-Apes-on-
Horseback."
The daisy that an Elizabethan poet quaintly describes as a Tudor
princess resembles the midsummer daisy rather than the "wee,
modest, crimson-tipped flower" of Burns:

About her neck she wears a rich wrought ruff

With double sets most brave and broad bespread
Resembling lovely lawn, or cambric stuff
Pinned up and prickt upon her yellow head.

Also Browne in his "Pastorals" seems to be thinking of this flower:

The Daisy scattered on each mead and down,

A golden tuft within a silver crown.

VIOLET (Viola odorata). The violet was considered "a choice

flower of delight" in English gardens. Shakespeare speaks of the
violet on many occasions and always with tenderness and deep
appreciation of its qualities. Violets are among the flowers that the
frightened Proserpine dropped from Pluto's ebon car—

Violets dim
And sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath.[38]

Thus in Shakespeare's opinion the violet out-sweetened both Juno,

majestic queen of heaven, and Venus, goddess of love and beauty.
How could he praise the violet more?

To throw a perfume on the violet

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Shakespeare informs us in "King John."[39] With the utmost delicacy

of perfection he describes Titania's favorite haunt as
 a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.[40]

In truth, the tiny flower seems to nod among its leaves.

Shakespeare makes the elegant Duke in "Twelfth Night," who is
lounging nonchalantly on his divan, compare the music he hears to
the breeze blowing upon a bank of violets[41] (see page 44).
[38] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.
[39] Act IV, Scene II.
[40] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.
[41] Act I, Scene I.
Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is
like the softest melody:

The snowdrop and then the violet

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;
And there was mixed with fresh color, sent
From the turf like the voice and the instrument.

And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,

Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music, so delicate, soft and intense
It was felt like an odor within the sense.

Ophelia laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies
and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us.
Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions.
Marina enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm,
saying:[42]

The yellows, blues,

The purple violets and marigolds
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days do last.
 [42] Act IV, Scene II.
On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare
mentions

The violets that strew

The green lap of the new-come Spring.

In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes:

The forward violet thus did I chide:

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal the sweet that smells
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants
do best perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all
others yields the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the
musk-rose." (See page 44.)
"Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of
Shakespeare's country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own
little churchyard of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in
every hedgebank until the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The
wastes near Stratford are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can
see with the flowers of viola canina. Our English violets are twelve in
number. The plant is still used in medicine and acquired of late a
notoriety as a suggested cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was
eaten raw with onions and lettuces and also mingled in broth and
used to garnish dishes, while crystallized violets are not unknown in
the present day."
For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color, for
the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for its
lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume, the
violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note the
delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain
a sense of its deeper beauty and significance.
Dr. Forbes Watson observed:
"I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and
pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens
form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this
beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely
visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of
the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if
this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the
want of it."
St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely
description of the flower when he said:
"A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around
an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always
hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued
coloring, showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden
and solitary places."
The violet's qualities of lowliness, humility, and sweetness have
always appealed to poets. The violet is also beloved because it is
one of the earliest spring flowers. Violets are, like primroses and
cowslips,

The first to rise

And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies,
The courier of a band of coming flowers.

The violet was also an emblem of constancy. At the floral games,

instituted by Clemence Isaure at Toulouse in the Fourteenth Century,
the prize was a golden violet, because the poetess had once sent a
violet to her Knight as a token of faithfulness. With the Troubadours
the violet was a symbol of constancy. In "A Handful of Pleasant
Delights," a popular song-book published in Elizabeth's reign in
1566, there is a poem called "A Nosegay always Sweet for Lovers to
send Tokens of Love at New Year's tide, or for Fairings, as they in
their minds shall be disposed to write." This poem contains a verse
to the violet:

Violet is for faithfulness

Which in me shall abide;
Hoping likewise that from your heart
You will not let it slide,

And will continue in the same,

As you have now begun;
And then forever to abide
Then you my heart have won.

The violet has always held a loved place in the English garden.
Gerard writes quaintly in his "Herbal":
"The Black, or Purple Violets, or March Violets, of the garden have a
great prerogative above all others, not only because the mind
conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and
handling of those most odoriferous flowers, but also for the very
many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there
be made of them garlands for the head, nosegays and poesies,
which are delightful to look on and pleasant to smell to, speaking
nothing of their appropriate virtues; yea, gardens themselves receive
by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beauty and most
gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind, which is taken
thereby, cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish
and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest; for flowers
through their beauty, variety of color and exquisite form do bring to
a liberal and great mind the remembrance of honesty, comeliness
and all kinds of virtue."
Proserpine was gathering violets among other flowers in the fields of
Enna in Sicily when Pluto carried her off. Shakespeare touched upon
the story most exquisitely, through the lips of Perdita, as quoted
above.
Another Greek myth accounts for the Greek word for the violet,
which is ion. It seems when, in order to protect her from the
persecutions of Juno, Jove transformed lovely Europa into a white
heifer whom he named Io, he caused sweet violets to spring up from
the earth wherever the white cow placed her lips; and from her
name, Io, the flower acquired the name ion.
The Athenians adored the flower. Tablets were engraved with the
word ion and set up everywhere in Athens; and of all sobriquets the
citizens preferred that of "Athenian crowned with violets."
The Persians also loved the violet and made a delicious wine from it.
A sherbet flavored with violet blossoms is served in Persia and Arabia
to-day at feasts; and Mohammedans say: "The excellence of the
violet is as the excellence of El Islam above all other religions."
 IV
"Lady-smocks all Silver White" and
"Cuckoo Buds
of Yellow Hue"
LADY-SMOCK (Cardamine pratensis). The lovely little spring
song in "Love's Labour's Lost"[43] with the line,

Lady-smocks all silver white,

has immortalized this little flower of the English meadows, but little
known in our country. The lady-smock is very common in England in
early spring. Properly speaking it should be Our Lady's-smock, as it
is one of the many plants dedicated to the Virgin Mary and bearing
her name. The list is a long one, including Lady's-slippers, Lady's-
bower, Lady's-cushion, Lady's-mantle, Lady's-laces, Lady's-looking-
glass, Lady's-garters, Lady's-thimble, Lady's-hair (maidenhair fern),
Lady's-seal, Lady's-thistle, Lady's-bedstraw, Lady's-fingers, Lady's-
gloves, and so on. These flowers, originally dedicated to Venus,
Juno, and Diana in Greek and Roman mythology and to Freya and
Bertha in Northern lore and legend, were gradually transferred to
the Virgin with the spread of Christianity. The Lady's-smock takes its
name from the fancied, but far-fetched, resemblance to a smock. It
is said, by way of explanation, that when these flowers are seen in
great quantity they suggest the comparison of linen smocks
bleaching on the green meadow. Other names for the plant are
Cuckoo-flower, Meadow-cress, Spinks, and Mayflower; and in Norfolk
the Cardamine pratensis is called Canterbury-bells. The petals have a
peculiarly soft and translucent quality with a faint lilac tinge.
Shakespeare describes the flower as "silver white," an epithet that
has puzzled many persons. However, one ardent Shakespeare lover
has made a discovery:
"Gather a lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in fragrant May,
and although in individuals the petals are sometimes cream color, as
a rule the flower viewed in the hand is lilac—pale, but purely and
indisputably lilac. Where then is the silver-whiteness? It is the
meadows, remember, that are painted, when, as often happens, the
flower is so plentiful as to hide the turf, and most particularly if the
ground be a slope and the sun be shining from behind us, all is
changed; the flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally
'silver-white.' So it is always—Shakespeare's epithets are like prisms.
Let them tremble in the sunshine and we discover that it is he who
knows best."
The beautiful song begins:

When daisies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
Cuckoo,
Cuckoo, Cuckoo—or word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

[43] Act V, Scene II.

CUCKOO BUDS (Ranunculus). It is quite possible that in

"cuckoo buds of yellow hue" Shakespeare meant the blossoms of the
buttercup or kingcup (called by the country people of Warwickshire
horse-blobs). Some authorities claim that cuckoo-buds is intended to
represent the lesser celandine, of which Wordsworth was so fond
that he wrote three poems to it. Others call cuckoo-buds carmine
pratensis; but that could hardly be possible because Shakespeare
speaks of "lady-smocks all silver white" in one line and "cuckoo buds
of yellow hue" in the succeeding line.