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The Plant-Lore & Garden-Craft of Shakespeare, a non-fiction book by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
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Part 1. The Plant-Lore Of Shakespeare - Fennel, Fern, Figs |
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_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE FENNEL, FERN, FIGS
The Fennel was always a plant of high reputation. The Plain of Marathon was so named from the abundance of Fennel (+marathron+) growing on it.[89:1] And like all strongly scented plants, it was supposed by the medical writers to abound in "virtues." Gower, describing the star Pleiades, says--
--- Conf. Aman., lib. sept. (3, 129. Paulli.) These virtues cannot be told more pleasantly than by Longfellow--
"Yet the virtues of Fennel, as thus enumerated by Longfellow, do not comprise either of those attributes of the plant which illustrate the two passages from Shakespeare. The first alludes to it as an emblem of flattery, for which ample authority has been found by the commentators.[89:2] Florio is quoted for the phrase 'Dare finocchio,' to give fennel, as meaning to flatter. In the second quotation the allusion is to the reputation of Fennel as an inflammatory herb with much the same virtues as are attributed to Eringoes."--Mr. J. F. MARSH in The Garden. The English name was directly derived from its Latin name Foeniculum, which may have been given it from its hay-like smell (foenum), but this is not certain. We have another English word derived from the Giant Fennel of the South of Europe (ferula); this is the ferule, an instrument of punishment for small boys, also adopted from the Latin, the Roman schoolmaster using the stalks of the Fennel for the same purpose as the modern schoolmaster uses the cane. The early poets looked on the Fennel as an emblem of the early summer--
--- Libaeus Diaconus.(1225). As a useful plant, the chief use is as a garnishing and sauce for fish. Large quantities of the seed are said to be imported to flavour gin, but this can scarcely be called useful. As ornamental plants, the large Fennels (F. Tingitana, F. campestris, F. glauca, &c.) are very desirable where they can have the necessary room.
[89:1] "Fennelle or Fenkelle, feniculum maratrum."--Catholicon Anglicum. [89:2]
There is a fashion in plants as in most other things, and in none is this more curiously shown than in the estimation in which Ferns are and have been held. Now-a-days it is the fashion to admire Ferns, and few would be found bold enough to profess an indifference to them. But it was not always so. Theocritus seems to have admired the Fern-- "Like Fern my tresses o'er my temples streamed."But Virgil gives it a bad character, speaking of it as "filicem invisam." Horace is still more severe, "neglectis urenda filix innascitur agris." The Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius spoke contemptuously of the "Thorns, and the Furzes, and the Fern, and all the weeds" (Cockayne). And so it was in Shakespeare's time. Butler spoke of it as the--
Cowley spoke the opinion of his day as if the plant had neither use nor beauty--
--- Plantarum, lib. i. And later still Gilpin, who wrote so much on the beauties of country scenery at the close of the last century, has nothing better to say for Ferns than that they are noxious weeds, to be classed with "Thorns and Briers, and other ditch trumpery." The fact, no doubt, is that Ferns were considered something "uncanny and eerie;" our ancestors could not understand a plant which seemed to them to have neither flower nor seed, and so they boldly asserted it had neither. "This kinde of Ferne," says Lyte in 1587, "beareth neither flowers nor sede, except we shall take for sede the black spots growing on the backsides of the leaves, the whiche some do gather thinking to worke wonders, but to say the trueth it is nothing els but trumperie and superstition." A plant so strange must needs have strange qualities, but the peculiar power attributed to it of making persons invisible arose thus:--It was the age in which the doctrine of signatures was fully believed in; according to which doctrine Nature, in giving particular shapes to leaves and flowers, had thereby plainly taught for what diseases they were specially useful.[91:1] Thus a heart-shaped leaf was for heart disease, a liver-shaped for the liver, a bright-eyed flower was for the eyes, a foot-shaped flower or leaf would certainly cure the gout, and so on; and then when they found a plant which certainly grew and increased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really believed this or not we cannot say,[92:1] but they were quite ready to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was a constant advertisement with the quacks. Even in Addison's time "it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who had arrived at the knowledge of the Green and Red Dragon, and had discovered the female Fern-seed. Nobody ever knew what this meant" ("Tatler," No. 240). But to name all the superstitions connected with the Fern would take too much space. The name is expressive; it is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon fepern, and so shows that some of our ancestors marked its feathery form; and its history as a garden plant is worth a few lines. So little has it been esteemed as a garden plant that Mr. J. Smith, the ex-Curator of the Kew Gardens, tells us that in the year 1822 the collection of Ferns at Kew was so extremely poor that "he could not estimate the entire Kew collection of exotic Ferns at that period at more than forty species" (Smith's "Ferns, British and Exotic," introduction). Since that time the steadily increasing admiration of Ferns has caused collectors to send them from all parts of the world, so that in 1866 Mr. Smith was enabled to describe about a thousand species, and now the number must be much larger; and the closer search for Ferns has further brought into notice a very large number of most curious varieties and monstrosities, which it is still more curious to observe are, with very few exceptions, confined to the British species.
[91:1] See Brown's "Religio Medici," p. ii. 2.
"Poor silly fool! thou striv'st in vain to know --- Poems, p. 26 (Sir E. Brydges' edit. 1815).
FIGS.
In some of these passages (as 5, 6, 7, and perhaps in more) the reference is to a grossly insulting and indecent gesture called "making the fig." It was a most unpleasant custom, which largely prevailed throughout Europe in Shakespeare's time, and on which I need not dwell. It is fully described in Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," i, 492. In some of the other quotations the reference is simply to the proverbial likeness of a Fig to a matter of the least importance.[94:1] But in the others the dainty fruit, the green Fig, is noticed. The Fig tree, celebrated from the earliest times for the beauty of its foliage and for its "sweetness and good fruit" (Judges ix. 11), is said to have been introduced into England by the Romans; but the more reliable accounts attribute its introduction to Cardinal Pole, who is said to have planted the Fig tree still living at Lambeth Palace. Botanically, the Fig is of especial interest. The Fig, as we eat it, is neither fruit nor flower, though partaking of both, being really the hollow, fleshy receptacle enclosing a multitude of flowers, which never see the light, yet come to full perfection and ripen their seed. The Fig stands alone in this peculiar arrangement of its flowers, but there are other plants of which we eat the unopened or undeveloped flowers, as the Artichoke, the Cauliflower, the Caper, the Clove, and the Pine Apple.
[94:1] This proverbial worthlessness of the Fig is of ancient date. Theocritus speaks of +sykinoi andres+, useless men; Horace, "Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum;" and Juvenal, "Sterilis mala robora ficus." _ |
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