8 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
But this legend was not followed by the other classical writers, 
who made the Anemone to be 
the flower of Adonis. Theocritus 
compares the Dog-rose (so called 
also in his day, Kwoor/^aros) and 
the Anemone with the Rose, 
and the Scholia comment on 
the passage thus—“ Anemone, 
a scentless flower, which they 
report to have sprung from the 
blood of Adonis; and again 
Nicander says that the Anemone 
sprung from the blood of 
Adonis.” 
The storehouse of our ances¬ 
tors’ pagan mythology was in 
Ovid, and his well-known lines are— 
“ Cum flos e sanguine concolor ortus 
Qualem, quae lento celant sub cortice granum 
Punica ferre solent ; brevis est tamen usus in illis, 
Namque male haerentem, et nimia brevitate caclucum 
Excutiunt idem qui praestant nomina, venti,”— 
thus translated by Golding in 1567, from whom it is very 
probable that Shakespeare obtained his information— 
“ Of all one colour with the bloud, a flower she there did find, 
Even like the flower of that same tree, whose fruit in tender rind 
Have pleasant graines enclosede—howbeit the use of them is short, 
For why, the leaves do hang so loose through lightnesse in such sort, 
As that the windes that all things pierce 1 with everie little blast 
Do shake them off and shed them so as long they cannot last.” 2 
I feel sure that Shakespeare had some particular flower in 
view. Spenser only speaks of it as a flower, and gives no 
description— 
1 Golding evidently adopted the reading “qui perflant omnia,” instead 
of the reading now generally received, “qui prrestant nomina.” 
2 Gerard thought that Ovid’s Anemone was the Venice Mallow —Hibiscus 
trionum —a handsome annual from the South of Europe. 
