62 
SHAKESPEARE'S GARDEN 
which render them troublesome to animals and man. 
Shakespeare, as usual, ever observant of natural 
peculiarities, has used this tendency in more than 
one metaphor. Thus in Measure for Measure , IV. iii. 
189 : 
Nay, friar, I am a kind of bur ; I shall stick ; 
while Celia cheers Rosalind’s mood, saying of the 
briars to which she has alluded in picture of her own 
troubles : 
They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday 
foolery : if we walk not in the trodden path, our very petti¬ 
coats will catch them.— As You Like It, I. iii. 13. 
To which there comes Rosalind’s sad reply : 
I could shake them off my coat : these burs are in my 
heart. 
And in another play : 
Hang off, thou cat, thou burr ! 
Midsummer-Night's Dream, III. ii. 260. 
But the golden - flowered plant we have already 
mentioned as a garden ornament requires to be con¬ 
sidered. It is the bladder senna ( Cassia senna , L.), 
a native of Egypt and Barbary. The plant was 
unknown to Shakespeare, since it was not introduced 
into our gardens before 1640, when Parkinson men¬ 
tions it. But as a medicine it was well known to 
the apothecaries of the day, and they used the 
leaves of Cassia lanceolata as well as the more common 
kind. 
What rhubarb, senna,* or what purgative drug, 
Would scour these English hence? 
Macbeth, V. iii. 55. 
If we turn for a while from the flower to the fruit 
garden, we shall find the cherry and the gooseberry 
to reward our pains. Twice does the poet directly 
* The Globe edition reads 4 ‘ cyme.” 
