There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;
pray, love, remember:
and there is pansies.
That's for thoughts.
There's fennel for you, and columbines:
there's rue for you; and here's some for me:
we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays:
O you must wear your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy:
I would give you some violets,
but they withered all when my father died:
they say he made a good end.
--William Shakespeare
Ordinary folk in Shakespeare’s time were
familiar with the medicinal use of plants. In this speech from Hamlet,
Ophelia is playing to the cheap seats when she mentions some
constituents of a typical garden of the times, in which flowers, herbs
and vegetables were common bedfellows.
A study of herbs is also a study of language.
It takes us back to a time when European parlance was a mushy mix,
before the colonization of the New World called a new kind of “English”
into being. Shakespeare’s audience, from the nobility down to the
hawkers and the hoi polloi, would have recognized the pun on
“pansies” and “thoughts.” “Pansies” were “pensées,” or “thoughts,” in
French, a language much enmeshed with the English language of
Elizabethan times. Pansies were also called “heartsease” and were
reputed to cure romantic ills. In Ophelia’s case, they were too little
and too late.
Daisy, to the Renaissance audience, wasn’t
just a pretty face. Even this common flower was a medicine, its potency
indicated by its original name, “day’s eye” (you can reference Chaucer
for that). The flowers when boiled made an infusion well known as a
remedy for wounds and fevers. Daisy was also called bruisewort or
brainwort, and Shakespeare’s mention of it would have been a
broad hint about Ophelia’s mental state and impending suicide.
Elizabethan play-goers would also have known
that rue, with its bitter taste, symbolized regret, and that it could be
used as an abortifacient. This reference probably evoked snickers in the
peanut gallery; the obvious implication was that Ophelia had been having
it off with the Prince and a Princelet was on the way. Ophelia tells her
mother Gertrude that she must wear her rue “with a difference,” a
reference to the queen being past her child-bearing years, and
regretful, perhaps, of her incestuous alliance with her dead husband’s
brother. That zany Will - he never missed a chance for a multi-purpose
pun.
Rue, called the “herb of grace” because
sprigs of it were used for sprinkling holy water, is of the same family
as poison oak and can be toxic in large doses. Columbine seed was also
said to hasten labor, an insinuation that would not have been lost on
Will’s fans. Fennel was a general cure-all and wild, or hog’s fennel,
was prescribed for dizziness and headaches, an appropriate anodyne to
the sorry state into which Ophelia is sinking. The Bard’s audience would
have connected all the dots when Ophelia floated up the river drowned
under the weight of her garments, possibly after trying to abort her
unwanted royal offspring by overdosing on rue, an action she would have
had cause to regret at the last. Her garland of violets was a last sad
symbol of (lost) virginity. And doubtless rosemary would have fulfilled
its traditional role at Ophelia's funeral, tucked into the coffin to
mask the odor of decay.
If
all this speculation seems a bit overblown, remember that plays and
pageants, as well as gardening, were entertainment and education for
people who didn’t have the stimulation of high-def TV and computer
games. Whoever you think Shakespeare was, you would probably agree that
he was well-read. Culpeper’s Herbal, a definitive work on the
propagation and medicinal uses of plants, hit the stands just ten years
before the first performance of Hamlet. Nicolas Culpeper’s
ground-breaking (pardon the pun) work on herbs is still used as a
reference in our times. With so little reading matter available, who can
doubt that Will had read Culpeper?
Culpeper’s introduction is proof that our
ancestors thought of the garden in cosmic terms:
“I knew well enough the whole world, and
every thing in it, was formed of a composition of contrary elements, and
in such a harmony as must needs show the wisdom and power of a great
God. I knew as well this Creation, though thus composed of contraries,
was one united body, and man an epitome of it: I knew those various
affections in man, in respect of sickness and health, were caused
naturally (though God may have other ends best known to himself) by the
various operations of the Microcosm; and I could not be ignorant, that
as the cause is, so must the cure be.”
Monastery or convent gardens in Shakespeare’s
time were called hortus conclusus, or enclaves and were often known as
“physicks” for their curative elements, whereas the castles were likely
to have a pleasaunce (note the Francophone influence) a utilitarian
garden that incorporated statues, bathing pools, labyrinths and complex
knot gardens woven of fast-growing hedge. Home gardens combined the
best of both, with an emphasis on variety.
To the pre-modern horticulturalist, the
fragrance of the garden was as important as its appearance was as
important as its usefulness. Imbibing fragrance was reckoned to be
healing in itself, an experience we moderns mimic, rather pitifully,
employing electric odor-spritzers to bring pleasance into our stacked
and crowded enclaves.
The modernization of gardening came when the
English and others began to explore the world, specifically for the
purpose of finding new and better spices. Shakespeare’s world was at the
crux of the age of discovery. The common kitchen garden would soon
become more edible and less medicinal as tastes changed, including
tastes in ornamentation. After viewing the pleasure domes of The
Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, even the staid English started to feel the
tickle of desire for something grander than the walled off backyard
raised beds that said “practicality” but didn’t say “conspicuous
wealth.”
