PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
35 
(i4) 
Scratches with Briers, 
Scars to move laughter only.— Coriolonus , iii. 3, 51. 
( 15 ) 
What subtle hole is this, 
Whose mouth is cover’d with rude-growing Briers ? 
Titus Andronicus, iii. 3, 198. 
(16) 
Each envious Brier his weary legs doth scratch. 
Venus and Adonis , 705. 
In Shakespeare’s time the “ Brier ” was not restricted to the 
Sweet Briar, as it usually is now; but it meant any sort of wild 
Rose, and even it would seem from No. 9 that it was applied 
to the cultivated Rose, for there the scene is laid in the Temple 
Gardens. In some of the passages it probably does not allude 
to any Rose, but simply to any wild thorny plant. That this 
was its common use then, we know from many examples. 
In “ Le Morte Arthur,” the Earl of Ascolot’s daughter is 
described—■ 
“ Hyr Rode was rede as blossom or Brere 
Or floure that springith in the felde ” (179). 
And in “A Pleasant New Court Song,” in the Roxburghe 
Ballads— 
“ I stept me close aside 
Under a Hawthorn Bryer. ” 
It bears the same meaning in our Bibles, where “Thorns,” 
“ Brambles,” and “ Briers,” stand for any thorny and useless 
plant, the soil of Palestine being especially productive of 
thorny plants of many kinds. Wickliffe’s translation of Matthew 
vii. 16 is—“Whether men gaderen grapis of thornes; or figis 
of Breris ? ” and Tyndale’s translation is much the same—“ Do 
men gaddre grapes of thornes, or figges of Bryeres ? ” 1 
1 a Brere—Carduus, tribulus, vepres, veprecula .”—Catholicon Anglian 11. 
