PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
179 
flbusbrooms* 
(1) You demi-puppets, that 
By moonshine do the greensour ringlets make, 
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime 
Is to make midnight Mushrooms.-— Tempest , v. 1, 36. 
(2) I do wander everywhere, 
Swifter than the moon’s sphere ; 
And I serve the fairy queen, 
To dew her orbs upon the green. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, ii, 1, 6. 
(3) And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, 
Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring : 
The expressure that it bears, green let it be, 
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see. 
Merry Wives, v. 5, 69. 
(4) Toadstool, learn me the proclamation. 
Troilus and Cressida , ii. 1, 22. 
The first three passages, besides the notice of the Mush¬ 
room, contain also the notice 
of the fairy-rings, which are 
formed by fungi, though pro¬ 
bably Shakespeare knew little of 
this. No. 4 names the Toad¬ 
stool, and the four passages 
together contain the whole of 
Shakespeare’s fungology, and it 
is little to be wondered at that 
he has not more to say on these 
curious plants. In his time 
“ Mushrumes or Toadstooles ” 
(they were all classed together) 
were looked on with very sus¬ 
picious eyes, though they were 
so much eaten that we frequently 
find in the old herbals certain remedies against “a surfeit of 
