178 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



licious name honeysuckle ! And truly this is one of 

 "the sweetest flowers for scent that blows." It takes 

 its name because of the honey dew found on it, so old 

 writers say. Romantic is its other name, "wood- 

 bine," suggesting sylvan spots and mossy beds, 

 where cool-rooted flowers grow, such as the "nod- 

 ding violet." Shakespeare knew what he was about 

 when he enwreathed and entwined Titania's canopy 

 with "luscious woodbine" in loving union with the 

 equally delicious eglantine. The honeysuckle is a 

 flower that belongs particularly to moonlight and to 

 fairy-time. 



In "Much Ado About Nothing" Hero gives the 

 command : * 



Good Margaret, run into the parlor and whisper to Beatrice 

 And bid her steal into the pleached bower, 

 Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun, 

 Forbid the sun to enter. 



A bower covered with the intense, yet subtle, per- 

 fume of the honeysuckle, doubly sweet in the hot 

 sun that had ripened the blossoms and drawn out 

 their inmost sweetness, was just the place to send 

 "saucy Beatrice" for the purpose of lighting the 

 flame of love for Benedick, and just the place to 

 send, a little later, the cynical Benedick for the pur- 



1 Act III, Scene I. 



