PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
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and not often tolerated there. But it was very different in 
Shakespeare’s time, when it was in high favour for its evergreen 
leaves and fine aromatic scent, remaining a long time after 
picking, so long, indeed, that both leaves and scent were 
almost considered everlasting. This was fits great charm, and 
so Spenser spoke of it as “the cheerful Rosemarie” and 
“refreshing Rosemarine,” and good Sir Thomas More had a 
great affection for it. “As for Rosemarine,” he said, “I lett 
it run alle over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees 
love it, but because tis the herb sacred to remembrance, and 
therefore to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb 
language that maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral 
wakes and in our buriall grounds.” And Parkinson gives a 
similar account of its popularity as a garden plant: “ Being in 
every woman’s garden, it were sufficient but to name it as an 
ornament among other sweet herbs and flowers in our gardens. 
In this our land, where it hath been planted in noblemen’s 
and great men’s gardens against brick walls, and there con¬ 
tinued long, it riseth up in time unto a very great height, with 
a great and woody stem of that compasse that, being cloven 
out into boards, it hath served to make lutes or such like 
instruments, and here with us carpenters’ rules and to divers 
others purposes.” It was the favourite evergreen wherever the 
occasion required an emblem of constancy and perpetual 
remembrance, such especially as weddings and funerals, at 
both of which it was largely used; and so says Herrick of 
“The Rosemarie Branch”— 
“ Grow for two ends, it matters not at all, 
Be’t for my bridall or my buriall.” 
Its use at funerals was very widespread, for Laurembergius 
records a pretty custom in use in his day, 1631, at Frankfort: 
“ Is mos apud nos retinetur, dum cupresso humile, vel rore 
marino, non solum coronamus funera jamjam ducenda, sed et 
iis appendimus ex iisdem herbis litteras collectas, significatrices 
nominis ejus quae defuncta est. Nam in puellarum funeribus 
haec fere fieri solent ” (“ Horticulturse,” cap. vj.). 
T 
