52 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
from its drug-shop fame, Hyssopus officinalis , L. ; 
it was growing in Gerard’s garden. It is used in the 
poet’s work in but one place ( Othello, I. iii. 324), in a 
curious description of bad gardening : 
If we will ... set hyssop. 
It was cultivated as early as 1548 (Turner’s 
“ Names of Herbes ”). 
Parsley can hardly be called a savoury herb, but 
it does not matter greatly if we find a place for its 
pretty curled green foliage here. It is a cultivated 
scion from a plant, native of Sardinia, Carum petrose- 
linum , Benth., which was growing in our English 
gardens as early as 1551. It is only mentioned once, 
and that as an ingredient in stuffing for a rabbit, pre¬ 
sumably roast ( Taming of the Shrew, IV. iv. 99). 
There are many species closely allied to the garden 
parsley found wild with us, including three of the 
same genus, viz., C. verticellatum, a local plant found 
chiefly in the West; C. segetum, Benth., also local, but 
found here and there in hedgebanks ; and C. carai 
and C. bulbo-castaneum, which we mention elsewhere. 
Garden parsley itself has a habit of escaping culture 
and making itself at home on castle walls and waste 
places. 
We have now to deal with a plant represented in 
no order inhabiting our islands, but one that has 
been very long amongst us, and to which untold 
virtues have at times been assigned, the rue, Rnta 
graveolens, a native of the South of Europe, a plant 
of a peculiarly beautiful glaucous foliage and an ex¬ 
ceptionally evil smell. Five times is it referred to in 
the poet—now as “ herb o’ grace,” now as the symbol 
for sorrow, most pathetically, perhaps, in Ophelia’s 
There’s rue for you, and there’s some for me : we may call 
it herb-grace o’ Sundays : O, you must wear your rue with a 
difference.— Hamlet, IV. v. 181. 
