94 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



arts and a new era of human sympathy for man- 

 kind. 



Sandro Botticelli, whom we may appropriately 

 call Flor di prima vera among painters, was as un- 

 aware 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." * 



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 



1 Act I, Scene I. 



