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PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
jSltru 
(1) Thou art an Elm, my husband, I a Vine, 
Whose weakness married to thy stronger state 
Makes me with thy strength to communicate. 
Comedy of Errors, ii. 2, 176, 
( 2 ) The female Ivy so 
Enrings the barky fingers of the Elm. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. 1, 48. 
(3) Answer, thou dead Elm, answer! 1 — 2nd Henry IV, ii. 4, 358. 
Though Vineyards were more common in England in the 
sixteenth century than now, yet I can nowhere find that the 
Vines were ever trained, in the Italian fashion, to Elms or 
Poplars. Yet Shakespeare does not stand alone in thus speak¬ 
ing of the Elm in its connection with the Vine. Spenser speaks 
of “the Vine-prop Elme,” and Milton— 
“They led the Vine 
To wed her Elm; she spoused, about him twines 
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings 
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn 
His barren leaves.” 
And Browne— 
“ She, whose inclination 
Bent all her course to him-wards, let him know 
He was the Elm, whereby her Vine did grow.” 
Britannia's Pastorals , i. 1. 
“An Elm embraced by a Vine, 
Clipping so strictly that they seemed to be 
One in their growth, one shade, one fruit, one tree ; 
Her boughs his arms ; his leaves so mixed with hers, 
That with no wind he moved, but straight she stirs.”— Ibid., ii. 4. 
But I should think that neither Shakespeare, nor Browne, 
1 Why Falstaff should be called a dead Elm is not very apparent; but 
the Elm was associated with death as producing the wood for coffins. 
Thus Chaucer speaks of it as “the piler Elme, the cofre unto careyne,” 
i. e. carrion (“Parliament of Fowles,” 177). 
