144 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
“ Were the rosemary branches dipped ?” (Beaumont 
and Fletcher’s “ Scornful Lady ”). 
Well, well, since wedding will come after wooing, 
Give me some rosemary, and letts be going. 
Fletcher : Woman's Pride. 
Ellacombe (p. 273) quotes a pleasing fragment in 
its favour from Sir Thomas Moore: 
“ As for Rosmarine, I lett it run alle over my 
garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but 
because ’tis the herb sacred to remembrance, and 
therefore to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a 
dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem 
at our funeral wakes, and in our buriall grounds.” 
The plant is a native of the South of Europe, and 
derives its name from ros mavis (spray of the sea), 
since it flourishes on the foreshore. 
Its evergreen habits are referred to in the Winter s 
Tale , IV. iv. 74 : 
Rosemary and rue ; these keep 
Seeming and savour all the winter long ; 
Grace and remembrance be to you both. 
And again in Hamlet , IV. v. 175 : 
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. 
Its use in funeral rites occurs in Romeo and Juliet, 
IV. v. 79: 
Stick your rosemary 
On this fair corse. 
The flower is a curiously pale bluish-white, and is 
not lacking in a beauty of its own, while the lasting 
scent which remains long after it has been gathered 
endeared it to the heart of the people. It is still 
considered a sovereign specific against cramp. 
There are three foreign plants, the products of 
which are mentioned by the bard. One is the tree 
