PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
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coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the 
first birds are singing, and the first bees humming, and the 
earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods; and 
it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, 
but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very 
opening of the year, if the weather will permit.”— Forbes 
Watson. It is this character of cheerfulness that so much 
endears the flower to us: as it brightens up our hedgerows 
after the dulness of winter, the harbinger of many brighter 
perhaps, but not more acceptable, beauties to come, it is the 
very emblem of cheerfulness. Yet it is very curious to note 
what entirely different ideas it suggested to our forefathers. 
To them the Primrose seems always to have brought associa¬ 
tions of sadness, or even worse than sadness, for the “Primrose 
paths” and “Primrose ways” of Nos. 6 and 7 are meant to be 
suggestive of pleasures, but sinful pleasures. 
Spenser associates it with death in some beautiful lines, in 
which a husband laments the loss of a young and beautiful 
wife— 
“ Mine was the Primerose in the lowly shade ! 
• • o • # v 
Oh ! that so fair a flower so soon should fade, 
And through untimely tempest fade away.” 
Daphnidia , 232. 
In another place he speaks of it as “ the Primrose trew ”— 
Prothalamion; but in another place his only epithet for it is 
“green,” which quite ignores its brightness— 
‘ ‘ And Primroses greene 
Embellish the sweete Violet.” 
Shepherd's Calendar — April. 
Shakespeare has no more pleasant epithets for our favourite 
flower than “pale,” “faint,” “that die unmarried;” and Milton 
follows in the same strain yet sadder. Once, indeed, he speaks 
of youth as “Brisk as the April buds in Primrose season” 
(“ Comus ”); but only in three passages does he speak of the 
