SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
39 
figurative sense, will be found in the Appendix, but 
one or two allusions are too beautiful to be missed, 
as is Lysander’s simile : 
Why is your cheek so pale ? 
How chance the roses that do fade so fast ? 
Midsummer-Night's Dream, I. i. 128. 
Again: 
Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud ; 
Dismask’d, their damask sweet commixture shown, 
Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown. 
Love's Labour's Lost , V. ii. 295. 
It may be remarked that twice in Hamlet there are 
expressions which may mislead. In Hamlet , Laertes 
says (IV. v. 157) : 
O rose of May ! 
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! 
merely intending youthful womanhood. And, again, 
in the same play (III. ii. 288), he speaks of 
Two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, 
when ribbon rosettes are intended. 
In the majority of passages where briars are 
alluded to, it is to their unpleasant qualities, such as : 
Rude-growing briars.— Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 199. 
O how full of briars is this working-day world ! 
As You Like It, I. iii. 12. 
I’ll have thy beauty scratched with briars. 
Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 436. 
And in the spirits’ mischievous tricks they figure as 
objects of punishment : 
through 
Toothed briars.— Tempest , IV. i. 178. 
Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briars. 
Midsummer-Night's Dream, IIP ii. 443. 
