146 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



Shakespeare's special roses are the Red, the White, 

 the Musk, the Eglantine (sweetbrier), the Pro- 

 vengal, or Provins, the Damask, the Canker, and the 

 Variegated. 



THE RED ROSE (Rose Anglic a rubra), the 

 English red, is thus described by Parkinson : 



'The Red Rose, which I call English because this 

 rose is more frequent and used in England than in 

 other places, never groweth so high as the Damask 

 Rose-bush, but more usually abideth low and 

 shooteth forth many branches from the Rose-bush 

 (and is but seldom suffered to grow up as the 

 Damask Rose into standards) with a green bark 

 thinner set with prickles and longer and greener 

 leaves on the upper side than in the white, yet with 

 an eye of white upon them, five likewise most 

 usually set upon a stalk and grayish, or whitish, un- 

 derneath. The Roses, or flowers, do very much vary 

 according to their site and abiding, for some are of 

 an orient red, or deep crimson, color and very double 

 (although never so double as the White), which, 

 when it is full blown, hath the largest leaves of any 

 other Rose; some of them again are paler, tending 

 somewhat to a Damask; and some are of so pale a 

 red as that it is rather of the color of a Canker Rose, 

 yet all for the most part with larger leaves than 



