Although Shakespeare wrote his performs over 400 years in the past, in some methods the world he wrote about has hardly dated. For occasion, the vegetation he referred to in his performs are the identical ones we’re accustomed to right this moment.

In his Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon tells Puck to squeeze the juice of a flower onto the sleeping lovers as a love potion:

“Yet marked I the place the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon just a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,

And maidens name it love-in-idleness”

Shakespeare will need to have thought this flower was particular.

The flower he’s referring to is the beautiful viola tricolour, often known as coronary heart’s-ease, which sounds extra like an angina treatment. Maybe the title got here from its supposed efficiency in love charms.

It’s additionally recognized by the pleasant names butterfly flower, wild pansy, kiss-me-quick, kiss behind the backyard gate, love-in-idleness, three faces underneath one hood, and Johnny-jump-up.

The viola is a relative of the pansy. The title pansy comes from the French work penseé which implies ‘thought’, most likely as a result of the pansy appears prefer it has a face. When a bouquet of pansies is given to you, it means, “I’m thinking of you.”

In Hamlet, Ophelia says:

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance: pray you, love, keep in mind.

And there may be pansies, that’s for ideas.”

These pansies appear like little males with moustaches.

Of course, maybe essentially the most well-known reference to a flower in Shakespeare’s work is that this oft-quoted line from Romeo and Juliet in Act 2 Scene 2:

“What’s in a reputation? That which we name a rose

By some other title would odor as candy;

So Romeo would, have been he not Romeo name’d,

Retain that pricey perfection which he owes

Without that title.”

Here Juliet is saying that even when a rose was known as one thing else it could nonetheless have its beautiful scent, and so it’s the flower, and never its title, that’s necessary. Likewise, if Romeo weren’t a Montague (her household’s nice enemy) he would nonetheless be who he’s.

What are your favorite flower references in Shakespeare’s works?

Happy puzzling!