PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
241 
outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into 
primerolles , and this into primrose — Dr. Prior. The name 
Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was 
an old English word, used to show excellence—• 
* ‘ A fairer nymph yet never saw mine eie, 
She is the pride and Primrose of the rest. 5 ’ 
Spenser, Colin Clout . 
“Was not I [the Briar] planted of thine own hande 
To bee the Primrose of all thy lande ; 
With flow’ring blossomes to furnish the prime 
And scarlet berries in summer time?” 
Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar—Februaries 
It was also a flower name, but not of our present Primrose, 
but of a very different plant. Thus in a Nominale of the 
fifteenth century we have “ hoc ligustrum, a Primerose; ” and 
in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date we have “ hoc 
ligustrum, A ce a Prymrose; ” and in the “ Promptorium Par- 
vulorum,” “Prymerose, primula, calendula, ligustrum”—and 
this name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration into 
Shakespeare’s time. Turner in 1538 says, “ligustrum arbor est 
non herba ut literatoru vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam 
a Prymerose.” In Tusser’s “ Husbandry ” we have “ set Privie 
or Prim ” (September Abstract), and— 
“Now set ye may 
The Box and Bay 
Hawthorn and Prim 
For clothes trim”— {January Abstract). 
And so it is described by Gerard as the Privet or Prim Print 
(1. e. prune printemps\ and even in the seventeenth century, 
Cole says of ligustrum, “ This herbe is called Primrose.” When 
the name was fixed to our present plant I cannot say, but cer¬ 
tainly before Shakespeare’s time, though probably not long 
before. It is rather remarkable that the flower, which we now 
so much admire, seems to have been very much overlooked by 
the writers before Shakespeare. In the very old vocabularies 
it does not at all appear by its present Latin name, Primula 
R 
