SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
27 
to its advantage, with the royal canopy in the beauti¬ 
ful lines in 3 Henry VI., II. v. 42 : 
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade 
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, 
Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy 
To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery ? 
O yes, it doth ; a thousandfold it doth. 
Even in the winter, when leaves and fruit alike 
have gone, the poet notes it : 
Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. 
King Lear, III. iv. 48. 
Its thorns are possibly referred to ( Midsummer - 
Night’s Dream, III. i. 6l and V. i. 136) under the term 
“ bush-of-thorn,” and possibly in Romeo and Juliet, 
I. iv. 25. 
The thorn has a wide geographical range ; it is 
found throughout Europe and in North Africa, and 
as far into Asia as the confines of India. In the 
English hedges there are several well-marked varieties, 
viz., oxyacanthoides, laciniata, kyrtostyla, and monogyna ; 
and many beautiful forms, with double, single, and 
coloured flowers, adorn our gardens. 
In the hedgerows there also grows the elder 
(Sambucus nigra, L.), a tree with strong scent, found 
throughout Europe to Northern Africa, and which 
tradition has assigned—no doubt from its brittle 
nature—as the tree on which the arch-traitor, Judas, 
hanged himself, as in Love’s Labour’s Lost, V. ii. 608, 
where Holofernes plays on the word with Biron : 
Hoi. Begin, sir ; you are my elder. 
Biron. Well followed : Judas was hanged on 
an elder. 
Sir John Mandeville was shown the identical tree 
in Jerusalem. He says : 
“ And faste by is zit, the Tree of Eldre that Judas 
