PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
169 
®ast. 
The Oaks bear Mast, the Briers scarlet hips. 
Timon of Athens, iv. 3, 174. 
We still call the fruit of beech, beech-masts, but do not 
apply the name to the acorn. It originally meant food used 
for fatting, especially for fatting swine. See note in “ Promp- 
torium Parvulorum,” p. 329, giving several instances of this 
use, and Strattmann, s. v. Msest. 
rtbeblar. 
(1) Apemantus. There’s a Medlar for thee, eat it. 
Tir?ion. On what I hate I feed not. 
Apemantus. Dost hate a Medlar? 
Timon. Ay, though it looks like thee. 
Apemantus. An thou hadst hated Meddlers sooner, thou shouldst have 
loved thyself better now.— Timon of Athens, iv. 3, 305. 
(2) They would have married me to the rotten Medlar. 
Measure for Measure, iv. 3, 183. 
(3) Touchstone. Truly the tree yields bad fruit. 
Rosalind. I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a 
Medlar; then it will be the earliest fruit in the country, for you’ll be 
rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the Medlar. 
As You Like It, iii. 2, 122. 
(4) Now will he sit under a Medlar tree, 
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit 
As maids call Medlars when they laugh alone. 
Romeo and Juliet, ii. 1, 80. 1 
The Medlar is an European tree, but not a native of England; 
it has, however, been so long introduced as to be now com¬ 
pletely naturalized, and is admitted into the English flora. It 
1 So Chester speaks of it as “the Young Man’s Medlar” (“Love’s 
Martyr,” p. 96, New Sh. Soc.). 
