36 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
Broom, 
(i) And thy Broom groves, 
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, 
Being lass-lorn. — Tempest , iv. I, 66. 
(3) I am sent with Broom before 
To sweep the dust behind the door. 
Midsummer Might's Dream, v. I, 396. 
(3) I made good my place ; at length they came to the Broomstaff with 
me .—Henry VIII , v. 4, 56. 
The Broom was one of the most popular plants of the 
Middle Ages. Its modern Latin name is Cytisus scofiarins , 
but under its then Latin name of Planta genista it gave its 
name to the Plantagenet family, either in the time of Henry 
II, as generally reported, or probably still earlier. As the 
favourite badge of the family it appears on their monuments 
and portraits, and was embroidered on their clothes and 
imitated in their jewels. Nor was it only in England that the 
plant was held in such high favour; it was the special flower 
of the Scotch, and it was highly esteemed in many countries 
on the Continent, especially in Brittany. Yet, in spite of all 
this, there are only these three notices of the plant in Shake¬ 
speare, and of those three, two (2 and 3) refer to its uses when 
dead; and the third (1), though it speaks of it as living, yet 
has nothing to say of the remarkable beauties of this favourite 
British flower. Yet it has great beauties which cannot easily 
be overlooked. Its large, yellow flowers, its graceful habit of 
growth, and its fragrance— 
“ Sweet is the Broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough”— 
Spenser, Sonnet xxvi. 
at once arrest the attention of the most careless observer of 
Nature. We are almost driven to the conclusion that Shake¬ 
speare could not have had much real acquaintance with the 
Broom, or he would not have sent his “dismissed bachelor” 
