PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
2 11 
©ear, 
(1) I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crest¬ 
fallen as a dried Pear .—Merry Wives of Windsor , iv. 5, 101. 
(2) Your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered 
Pears, it looks ill, it eats drily ; marry, ’tis a withered Pear; it was 
formerly better ; marry, yet ’tis a withered Pear. 
Airs Well that Ends Well, i. 1, 174. 
(3) I must have Saffron to colour the Warden pies. 
Winter s Tale , iv. 3, 48. 
(4) O, Romeo . . . thou a Poperin Pear. 
Romeo and fuliet, ii. 1, 37. 
If we may judge by these few notices, Shakespeare does not 
seem to have had much respect for the Pear, all the references 
to the fruit being more or less absurd or unpleasant. Yet 
there were good Pears in his day, and so many different kinds 
that Gerard declined to tell them at length, for “ the stocke 
or kindred of Pears are not to be numbered; every country 
hath his peculiar fruit, so that to describe them apart were to 
send an owle to Athens, or to number those things that are 
without number.” 
Of these many sorts Shakespeare mentions by name but 
two, the Warden and the Poperin, and it is not possible to 
identify these with modern varieties with any certainty. The 
Warden was probably a general name for large keeping and 
stewing Pears, and the name was said to come from the Anglo- 
Saxon wearden , to keep or preserve, in allusion to its lasting 
qualities. But this is certainly a mistake. In an interesting 
paper by Mr. Hudson Turner, “ On the State of Horticulture 
in England in early Times, chiefly previous to the fifteenth 
century,” printed in the “ Archaeological Journal,” vol. v. 
p. 301, it is stated that “the Warden Pear had its origin and 
its name from the horticultural skill of the Cistercian Monks 
of Wardon Abbey in Bedfordshire, founded in the twelfth 
century. Three Warden Pears appeared in the armorial 
bearings of the Abbey.” . 
