NOTES. 119 



flowers are treated by the poets. Shakspeare, no 

 doubt, loved them in his way, but after all, there are 

 but few passages in which flowers are used otherwise 

 than as an illustration or an emblem. There are, 

 indeed, Titania's flowered bank, and Perdita's garden, 

 redolent of herbs and gay with Violets, Primroses, 

 and Daffodils, but where no Gillyflower was allowed 

 to grow, and poor Ophelia's melancholy blossoms, 

 and the song in Love's Labour's Lost, and that is 

 nearly all. Shakspeare often speaks of Roses, but 

 almost always, excepting in the scene at the Temple 

 Gardens, by way of compliment or comparison. The 

 musk-rose, indeed, appears in the Midsummer Nighfs 

 Dream, and this Rose, which is now quite unknown to 

 most of us, was evidently a favourite in Elizabethan 

 gardens, for Bacon says of it that, next the white double 

 Violet (which is also almost lost), the musk-rose " yeelds 

 the sweetest smell in the aire." 



But Shakspeare's favourite flowers seem to have been 

 the Primrose, the Violet, the Pansy, and, above all, the 

 Cowslip. He must often have recalled his boyish walks 

 in spring along the Avon, and remembered how the low- 

 lying fields of Stratford were all sweet and yellow with 

 the Cowslip. And so it is within a Cowslip's bell that 

 Ariel hides, and Cowslips are Titania's pensioners on 

 whose ears the fairies must hang pearls, and when the 

 fields of France are desolated the "freckled Cowslip" 

 does not grow there any more, and the mole on Imogen's 

 breast is " like the crimson drops i' the bottom of a 

 Cowslip." 



Before passing from Shakspeare, I should like to call 

 the attention of the directors or managers of New Place 



