256 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
IRbubavb. 
What Rhubarb, Cyme, or what purgative drug 
Would scour these English hence ?—Macbeth , v. 3, 55. 
Andrew Boorde writing from Spayne in 1535, to Thomas 
Cromwell, says, “ I have sent to your Mastershipp the seeds 
of Reuberbe the whiche come forth of Barbary—in this parte 
ytt ys had for a grett tresure.” 1 But the plant does not seem 
to have become established, and Shakespeare could only have 
known the imported drug, for the Rheum was first grown by 
Parkinson, though it had been described in an uncertain way 
both by Lyte and Gerard. Lyte said : “ Rha, as it is thought, 
hath great broad leaves : ” and then he says : “We have found 
here in the gardens of certaine diligent herboristes that strange 
plant which is thought by some to be Rha or Rhabarbum; ” 
but from the figure it is very certain that the plant was not a 
Rheum. After the time of Parkinson, it was largely grown for 
the sake of producing the drug, and it is still grown in England 
to some extent for the same purpose, chiefly in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Banbury; though it is doubtful whether any of the 
species now grown in England are the true species that has 
long produced Turkey Rhubarb. The plant is now grown 
most extensively as a spring vegetable, though I cannot find 
when it first began to be so used. Parkinson evidently tried 
it and thought well of it. “ The leaves have a fine acid taste; a 
syrup, therefore, made with the juice and sugar cannot but be 
very effectual in dejected appetites.” Yet even in 1807 Pro¬ 
fessor Martyn, the editor of “ Millar’s Dictionary,” in a long 
article on the Rhubarb, makes no mention of its culinary 
qualities, but in 1822 Phillips speaks of it as largely cultivated 
for spring tarts, and forced for the London markets, “ medical 
1 Quoted in Furnivall’s Forewords to Boorde’s “Introduction to Know¬ 
ledge,” p. 56. 
