112 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
(19) Ay but, 
sir, “ while the Grass grows,”—the proverb is something 
musty. 
— Hamlet , iii. 2, 358. 
(20) 
He is dead and gone, lady, 
He is dead and gone; 
At his head a Grass-green turf, 
At his heels a stone.— Ibid., iv. 5, 29. 
(21) 
I should be still 
Plucking the Grass to know where sits the wind. 
Merchant of Venice, i. I, 17. 
(22) 
Sweet bottom-grass.— Venus and Adonis, 236. 
(23) 
For on the Grass she lies.— Ibid., 473. 
(24) 
No flower was nigh, no Grass, herb, leaf, or weed. 
Ibid., 1055. 
(25) 
An April daisy on the Grass.— Rape of Lucrece, 395. 
In and before Shakespeare’s time Grass was used as a general 
term for all plants. Thus Chaucer— 
“ And every grass that groweth upon roote 
Sche schal eek know, to whom it will do boote 
A 1 be his woundes never so deep and wyde.” 
The Squyeres Tale. 
It is used in the same general way in the Bible, “ the Grass of 
the field.” 
In the whole range of botanical studies the accurate study 
of the Grasses is, perhaps, the most difficult as the genus is 
the most extensive, for Grasses are said to “ constitute, perhaps, 
a twelfth part of the described species of flowering plants, and 
at least nine-tenths of the number of individuals comprising 
the vegetation of the world” (Lindley), so that a full study 
of the Grasses may almost be said to be the work of a lifetime. 
But Shakespeare was certainly no such student of Grasses: 
in all these passages Grass is only mentioned in a generic 
manner, without any reference to any particular Grass. The 
passages in which hay is mentioned, I have not thought 
necessary to quote. 
