4 8 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
It has long been held up to opprobrium as the 
poison by which Socrates was executed, and in 
Shakespeare’s time was looked upon as only fit for a 
witch’s broth, with such other plants of evil repute 
as henbane, nightshade, moon wort, and leopard’s- 
bane. The only other reference is in Macbeth, 
IV. i. 25, where to obtain the requisite strength we 
find : 
Root of hemlock, digged i’ the dark. 
From the unattractive hemlock it is a pleasant 
duty to re-enter once again Titania’s bower, and 
rest with that dainty queen beneath the clustering 
masses of woodbine. Everyone knows the honey¬ 
suckle, with its fragrant trumpet-shaped flowers, 
which the wild bees pierce at the base to plunder 
the nectary. Only one species is truly native, the 
L. periclymenum , L., but two others are naturalized— 
L. caprifolium , L. (in Oxfordshire and Cambridge) ; 
L . xylosteum, L. (in Sussex and Herts); while in 
Gerard’s garden the red species from Switzerland, 
L. alpigena , was growing in 1596. 
The two English names for the plant are used to¬ 
gether by Titania : 
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. . . . 
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle. 
Midsummer-Night's Dream, IV. i. 44. 
Hero speaks of 
the pleached bower, 
Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, 
Forbid the sun to enter. 
Much Ado about Nothing, III. i. 7. 
And later on, in the same play, we get: 
Beatrice, who even now 
Is couched in the woodbine coverture. 
Ibid., III. i. 29. 
