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_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE
PEPPER, PINE, PIG-NUTS
PEPPER.
(1) Hotspur. Such protest of Pepper-gingerbread.
--- 1st Henry IV, act iii, sc. 1 (260).
(See GINGER, 9.)
(2) Falstaff.
An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made
of, I am a Pepper-corn, a brewer's horse.
--- Ibid., act iii, sc. 3 (8).
(3) Poins.
Pray God, you have not murdered some of them.
Falstaff.
Nay, that's past praying for, for I have Peppered two of them.
--- Ibid., act ii, sc. 4 (210).
(4) Falstaff.
I have led my ragamuffins, where they are Peppered.
--- Ibid., act v, sc. 3 (36).
(5) Mercutio.
I am Peppered, I warrant, for this world.
--- Romeo and Juliet, act iii, sc. 1 (102).
(6) Ford.
He cannot 'scape me, 'tis impossible he should; he cannot
creep into a halfpenny purse or into a Pepper-box.
--- Merry Wives, act iii, sc. 5 (147).
(7) Sir Andrew.
Here's the challenge, read it; I warrant there's vinegar and
Pepper in't.
--- Twelfth Night, act iii, sc. 4 (157).
Pepper is the seed of Piper nigrum, "whose drupes form the black Pepper of the shops when dried with the skin upon them, and white Pepper when that flesh is removed by washing."--LINDLEY. It is, like all the pepperworts, a native of the Tropics, but was well known both to the Greeks and Romans. By the Greeks it was probably not much used, but in Rome it seems to have been very common, if we may judge by Horace's lines--
"Deferar in vicum, vendentem thus et odores,
Et piper, et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis."
--- Epistolae ii, 1-270.
And in another place he mentions "Pipere albo" as an ingredient in cooking. Juvenal mentions it as an article of commerce, "piperis coemti" (Sat. xiv. 293). Persius speaks of it in more than one passage, and Pliny describes it so minutely that he evidently not only knew the imported spice, but also had seen the living plant. By the Romans it was probably introduced into England, being frequently met with in the Anglo-Saxon Leech-books. It is mentioned by Chaucer--
"And in an erthen pot how put is al,
And salt y-put in and also Paupere."
--- Prologue of the Chanoune's Yeman.
It was apparently, like Ginger, a very common condiment in Shakespeare's time, and its early introduction into England as an article of commerce is shown by passages in our old law writers, who speak of the reservation of rent, not only in money, but in "pepper, cummim, and wheat;" whence arose the familiar reservation of a single peppercorn as a rent so nominal as to have no appreciable pecuniary value.[204:1]
The red or Cayenne Pepper is made from the ground seeds of the Capsicum, but I do not find that it was used to known in the sixteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[204:1] Littleton does not mention Pepper when speaking of rents reserved otherwise than in money, but specifies as instances, "un chival, ou un esperon dor, ou un clovegylofer"--a horse, a golden spur, or a clove gilliflower.
PIG-NUTS.
Caliban. I prythee let me bring thee where Crabs grow;
And I with my long nails will dig thee Pig-nuts.
--- Tempest, act ii, sc. 2 (171).
Pig-nuts or Earth-nuts are the tuberous roots of Conopodium denudatum (Bunium flexuosum), a common weed in old upland pastures; it is found also in woods. This root is really of a pleasant flavour when first eaten, but leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is said to be much improved by roasting, and to be then quite equal to Chestnuts. Yet it is not much prized in England except by pigs and children, who do not mind the trouble of digging for it. But the root lies deep, and the stalk above it is very brittle, and "when the little 'howker' breaks the white shank he at once desists from his attempt to reach the root, for he believes that it will elude his search by sinking deeper and deeper into the ground" (Johnston). I have never heard of its being cultivated in England, but it is cultivated in some European countries, and much prized as a wholesome and palatable root.
PINE.
(1) Prospero. She did confine thee,
* * * * *
Into a cloven Pine;
* * * * *
It was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The Pine and let thee out.
--- Tempest, act i, sc. 2 (273).
(2) Suffolk.
Thus droops this lofty Pine and hangs his sprays.
--- 2nd Henry VI, act ii, sc. 3 (45).
(3) Prospero.
And by the spurs plucked up
The Pine and Cedar.
--- Tempest, act v, sc. 1 (47).
(4) Agamemnon.
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound Pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
--- Troilus and Cressida, act i, sc. 3 (7).
(5) Antony.
Where yonder Pine does stand
I shall discover all.
* * * * *
This Pine is bark'd
That overtopped them all.
--- Antony and Cleopatra, act iv, sc. 12 (23).
(6) Belarius.
As the rudest wind
That by the top doth take the mountain Pine,
And make him stoop to the vale.
--- Cymbeline, act iv, sc. 2 (174).
(7) 1st Lord.
Behind the tuft of Pines I met them.
--- Winter's Tale, act ii, sc. 1 (33).
(8) Richard.
But when from under this terrestrial ball
He fires the proud top of the eastern Pines.
--- Richard II, act iii, sc. 2 (41).
(9) Antonio.
You may as well forbid the mountain Pines
To wag their high tops and to make no noise,
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven.
--- Merchant of Venice, act iv, sc. 1 (75).
(10)
Ay me! the bark peel'd from the lofty Pine,
His leaves will wither, and his sap decay;
So must my soul, her bark being peel'd away.
--- Lucrece (1167).
In No. 8 is one of those delicate touches which show Shakespeare's keen observation of nature, in the effect of the rising sun upon a group of Pine trees. Mr. Ruskin says that with the one exception of Wordsworth no other English poet has noticed this. Wordsworth's lines occur in one of his minor poems on leaving Italy--
"My thoughts become bright like yon edging of Pines
On the steep's lofty verge--how it blackened the air!
But touched from behind by the sun, it now shines
With threads that seem part of its own silver hair."
While Mr. Ruskin's account of it is this: "When the sun rises behind a ridge of Pines, and those Pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches and all, becomes one frost-work of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either side of the sun."--Stones of Venice, i. 240.
The Pine is the established emblem of everything that is "high and lifted up," but always with a suggestion of dreariness and solitude. So it is used by Shakespeare and by Milton, who always associated the Pine with mountains; and so it has always been used by the poets, even down to our own day. Thus Tennyson--
"They came, they cut away my tallest Pines--
My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge--
High o'er the blue gorge, and all between
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract
Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn
The panther's roar came muffled while I sat
Down in the valley."
--- Complaint of AEnone.
Sir Walter Scott similarly describes the tree in the pretty and well-known lines--
"Aloft the Ash and warrior Oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And higher yet the Pine tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow sky."
Yet the Pine which was best known to Shakespeare, and perhaps the only Pine he knew, was the Pinus sylvestris, or Scotch fir, and this, though flourishing on the highest hills where nothing else will flourish, certainly attains its fullest beauty in sheltered lowland districts. There are probably much finer Scotch firs in Devonshire than can be found in Scotland. This is the only indigenous Fir, though the Pinus pinaster claims to be a native of Ireland, some cones having been supposed to be found in the bogs, but the claim is not generally allowed (there is no proof of the discovery of the cones); and yet it has become so completely naturalized on the coast of Dorsetshire, especially about Bournemouth, that it has been admitted into the last edition of Sowerby's "English Botany."
But though the Scotch Fir is a true native, and was probably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin, Pinus, as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from the Latin, pix. In the early vocabularies it is called "Pin-treow," and the cones are "Pin-nuttes." They were also called "Pine apples," and the tree was called the Pine-Apple Tree.[208:1] This name was transferred to the rich West Indian fruit[208:2] from its similarity to a fir-cone, and so was lost to the fruit of the fir-tree, which had to borrow a new name from the Greek; but it was still in use in Shakespeare's day--
"Sweete smelling Firre that frankensence provokes,
And Pine Apples from whence sweet juyce doth come."
--- CHESTER'S Love's Martyr.
And Gerard describing the fruit of the Pine Tree, says: "This Apple is called in . . . Low Dutch, Pyn Appel, and in English, Pine-apple, clog, and cones." We also find "Fyre-tree," which is a true English word meaning the "fire-tree;" but I believe that "Fir" was originally confined to the timber, from its large use for torches, and was not till later years applied to the living tree.
The sweetness of the Pine seeds, joined to the difficulty of extracting them, and the length of time necessary for their ripening, did not escape the notice of the emblem-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With them it was the favourite emblem of the happy results of persevering labour. Camerarius, a contemporary of Shakespeare and a great botanist, gives a pretty plate of a man holding a Fir-cone, with this moral: "Sic ad virtutem et honestatem et laudabiles actiones non nisi per labores ac varias difficultates perveniri potest, at postea sequuntur suavissimi fructus." He acknowledges his obligation for this moral to the proverb of Plautus: "Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem" ("Symbolorum," &c., 1590).
In Shakespeare's time a few of the European Conifers were grown in England, including the Larch, but only as curiosities. The very large number of species which now ornament our gardens and Pineta from America and Japan were quite unknown. The many uses of the Pine--for its timber, production of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine--were well known and valued. Shakespeare mentions both pitch and tar.
FOOTNOTES:
[208:1] For many examples see "Catholicon Anglicum," s.v. Pyne-Tree, with note.
[208:2] The West Indian Pine Apple is described by Gerard as "Ananas, the Pinea, or Pine Thistle." _
Read next: Part 1. The Plant-Lore Of Shakespeare: Pinks, Piony, Plane
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