24 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
The codling is a name applied at that time to any 
unripe apple. Thus, 
A codling when ’tis almost an apple. 
Twelfth Night, I. v. 167. 
It does not mean the variety so called in our modern 
gardens. 
Leathercoats, referred to in 2 Henry IV., V. iii. 44, 
are brown russets. 
The pippin, originally applied to any apple raised 
from pips, is now, and may have been in Elizabethan 
times, assigned specifically to bright-skinned apples 
with good keeping qualities. Thus, as an example, 
the apple is referred to as “last year's pippin" 
in 2 Henry IV., V. iii, 2, and again in the Merry 
Wives of Windsor, I. ii. 1 3 : 
There’s pippins and cheese to come. 
The pomewater cannot be identified with any 
certainty. Ellacombe suggests the modern Lord 
Suffield apple : 
The pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of 
caelo.— Love's Labour's Lost , IV. ii. 4. 
There is also the costard, a coarse variety, used as a 
contemptuous epithet for an ignorant head in King 
Richard III., I. iv. 159. Its name is of interest, since 
our word “ costermonger ” is derived from it. 
Besides all these, we have a reference to a dish as 
popular then as it is to-day—apple tart : 
What’s this ? a sleeve ? ’Tis like a demi-cannon: 
What! up and down, carved like an apple-tart ? 
Taming of the Shrew , IV. iii. 88. 
And, lastly, to the apple of the Garden of Eden, 
