The Botany of Shakespeare 213 



of describing for the purpose of our recognition, as does 

 Chaucer, or of giving us all at once a list of trees as does 

 Spenser; and yet he knew all the trees that Spenser 

 knew; but, in our journey, we meet the trees, trees of 

 every sort, and they serve a temporary purpose in the 

 unfolding plot as in the spreading landscape. They 

 overarch the king, they catch the first glances of the 

 morning light, they wag their tall tops against the sky, 

 they stand bare and dead on some forgotten shore of 

 Timon's dismal exile; but in every case they stand just 

 where they belong; they have always their appropriate 

 setting. Furthermore, they always come to the relief of 

 the principal action. They are like the background of 

 the well-appointed stage ; they relieve what might other- 

 wise prove harsh or dissonant. This comes out more than 

 once. Some of Shakespeare's most beautiful touches, so 

 far as blossoms are concerned, come in the very climax 

 of the play's most sombre or pathetic movement. We 

 walk with Horatio "in the dead vast and middle of the 

 night" when suddenly the darkness parts and our eyes 

 rest upon whole banks of bloom all glinting in the bril- 

 liance of some sudden beam. Ophelia sings and dies 

 amid the flowers. 



The extreme naturalness of Shakespeare's touch is 

 due, in part at least, to his boyhood familiarity with 

 rural sights and sounds. England in Shakespeare's day 

 as now was a land of bloom, and the poet spoke of violets 

 and primroses as naturally as his Lord spoke of lilies 

 and for the same reason ; those were the flowers he saw, 

 had always known; they formed part of the furnishing 

 of his mind. But Shakespeare does more than mention 



