Bard knew his roses damask’d, red and white
Was Shakespeare a gardener?
Probably not. In his relatively short life (he died at 52) the Bard cranked out no less than 39 plays and 154 sonnets. So I doubt he found the time to cultivate carrots.
Yet our most celebrated playwright clearly knew a lot about plants and gardens. That’s evident in virtually everything he wrote. After all, who doesn’t remember, from school, all those allusions to flowers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows
Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows
Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine . . . ”
And, since June 24 had significance for Shakespeare (the Elizabethans always called today’s date “Midsummer Night”), it’s time to celebrate a wonderful new book about his gardening connections.
Shakespeare’s Gardens came out this spring to coincide with the 400th anniversary of his birth. While the photos by Andrew Lawson are captivating, I was equally taken by the delightful text.
British author Jackie Bennett digs up many entertaining facts about life back then. Even if you aren’t into Othello and Twelfth Night, learning what people grew, what they cooked and ate and what they used to cure their aches and pains is fascinating. Unlike other writers on Shakespeare (mostly dry academics) Bennett doesn’t shy away from including some spicy bits of gossip. A few snippets: Shakespeare’s father, John, was fined one shilling on April 29, 1552, for having an “unauthorized dung heap” on Henley Street in Stratford on Avon.
The “eglantine” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ( and many other plays) were wild shrub roses. Shakespeare’s son-in-law, a doctor named John Hall, listed 60 different uses for these roses in treating illness.
All the elements of a typical Elizabethan garden — allées and walks, mazes and knots, viewing platforms, orchards and arbours — keep popping up in Shakespeare’s plays.
Everyone loved sugar because it cost a lot. (Honey was considered second best.) The well-to-do ate rosemary flowers coated in sugar as the 16th-century version of an energy bar.
Potatoes were unknown, but “persnepes” (parsnips) were standard fare. When Sir Water Raleigh presented the first spuds brought from the New World to Queen Elizabeth I, her cook used only the leaves and threw the tubers out.
Shakespeare’s older daughter, Susanna, was accused of having an affair with a hatter and giving him syphilis. But the charges — luckily for her — were eventually dropped.
Protecting the environment was a concern even then. Owners of woods with less than 24 years growth had to leave 12 oaks, elm, ash and beech as standing trees.
Mulberry trees were planted everywhere. A spiteful clergyman, who bought Shakespeare’s Stratford on Avon home after his death, cut down the mulberry tree in the garden (he apparently got fed up with rubberneckers coming to see the famous playwright’s home). But swinging the axe got him hounded out of town by angry residents.
Shakespeare objected to his younger daughter Judith marrying Thomas Quiney because Quiney had made another woman pregnant before the wedding. The nuptials went ahead anyway.
Shakespeare’s Gardens is published by Frances Lincoln in association with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It costs about $48. Enjoy it with a glass of mead (a favourite tipple of Shakespeare) on a lovely summer day, preferably in the shade of a mulberry tree. soniaday.com