PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
69 
The Cypress 1 ( Cupresses sempervirens), originally a native of 
Mount Taurus, is found abundantly through all the South of 
Europe, and is said to derive its name from the Island of 
Cyprus. It was introduced into England many years before 
Shakespeare’s time, but is always associated in the old authors 
with funerals and churchyards; so that Spenser calls it the 
“ Cypress funereal,” which epithet he may have taken from 
Pliny’s description of the Cypress: “ Natu morosa, fructu 
supervacua, baccis torva, foliis amara, odore violenta, ac ne 
umbra quidem gratiosa—Diti sacra, et ideo funebri signo ad 
domos posita” (“Nat. Hist.,” xvi. 32). 
Sir John Mandeville mentions the Cypress in a very curious 
way: “ The Cristene men, that dwellen beyond the See, in 
Grece, seyn that the tree of the Cros, that we callen Cypresse, 
was of that tree that Adam ete the Appule of; and that fynde 
thei writen” (“ Voiage,” &c., cap. 2). And the old poem of the 
“ Squyr of lowe degre,” gives the tree a sacred pre-eminence— 
“ The tre it was of Cypresse, 
The fyrst tre that Iesu cliese.” 
Ritson’s Ear. Eng. Met . Romances , viii. 31. 
“ In the Arundel MS. 42 may be found an alphabet of 
plants. . . . The author mentions his garden ‘ by Stebenhythe 
by syde London,’ and relates that he brought a bough of 
Cypress with its Apples from Bristol ‘ into Estbritzlond,’ fresh 
1 Cypress, or Cyprus (for the word is spelt differently in the different 
editions), is also mentioned by Shakespeare in the following—■ 
(1) In sad Cypress let me be laid. — Twelfth Night , ii. 4. 
(2) To one of your receiving 
Enough is shown; and Cyprus, not a bosom, 
Hides my poor heart.— Ibid., iii. I. 
(3) Lawn as white as driven snow, 
Cyprus, black as e’er was crow.— Winter's Tale , iv. 3. 
But in all these cases the Cypress is not the name of the plant, but is the 
fabric which we now call crape, the “sable stole of Cypre’s lawn” of 
Milton’s “Penseroso.” 
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