i 7 3 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
large branches from a Mulberry tree to make standards for his 
clothes-lines, and that each standard took root, and became a 
flourishing Mulberry tree. 
Though most of us only know of the common White or 
Black Mulberry, yet, where it is grown for silk culture (as it is 
now proposed to grow it in England, with a promised profit of 
from ^70 to £100 per acre for the silk, and an additional 
profit of from £100 to ^500 per acre from the grain (eggs)!!), 
great attention is paid to the different varieties; so that M. de 
Quartrefuges briefly describes six kinds cultivated in one valley 
in France, and Royle remarks, “so many varieties have been 
produced by cultivation that it is difficult to ascertain whether 
they all belong to one species; they are,” as he adds, “nearly 
as numerous as those of the silkworm ” (Darwin). 
We have good proof of Shakespeare’s admiration of the 
Mulberry in the celebrated Shakespeare Mulberry growing in 
his garden at New Place at Stratford-on-Avon. “That Shake¬ 
speare planted this tree is as well authenticated as anything of 
that nature can be, . . . and till this was planted there was no 
Mulberry tree in the neighbourhood. The tree was celebrated 
in many a poem, one especially by Dibdin, but about 1752, 
the then owner of New Place, the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, bought 
and pulled down the house, and wishing, as it should seem, to 
be ‘damned to everlasting fame,’ he had some time before cut 
down Shakespeare’s celebrated Mulberry tree, to save himself 
the trouble of showing it to those whose admiration of our 
great poet led them to visit the poetick ground on which it 
stood.”— Malone. The pieces were made into many snuff¬ 
boxes 1 and other mementoes of the tree. 
“ The Mulberry tree was hung with blooming wreaths ; 
The Mulberry tree stood centre of the dance ; 
The Mulberry tree was hymn’d with dulcet strains; 
And from his touchwood trunk the Mulberry tree 
Supplied such relics as devotion holds 
Still sacred, and preserves with pious care. ” 
Cowper, Task , book vi. 
1 Some of these snuff-boxes were inscribed with the punning motto 
“Memento Mori.” 
