John Gerarde, The Herball, 1597 - gilloflowers (Wall Flowers), p.370.

Move your pointing device over the image to zoom to detail. If using a mouse click on the image to toggle zoom.
When in zoom mode use + or - keys to adjust level of image zoom.

Date:1597

Description:The names of plants, discussed by Shakespeare.

The detail with which Gerarde describes plants, vegetables and fruit as well as flowers assisted contemporary herbalists and housewives with their gardens. In <i.The Winter’s Tale Perdita and Polixenes discuss the hybridisation of plants, which Perdita sees as un-natural . She speaks of 'carnations and streaked gillivors, which some call nature’s bastards’

‘There is an art which in their piedness shares with great creating nature’ to which Polixenes counters ‘say there be, yet nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean... We marry a gentler scion to the wildest stock, and make conceive a bark of baser kind by bud of nobler race.’ He urges: ‘make your garden rich in gillivors and do not call them bastards.' (4,4, lines 79-99). He is referring to carnations not to gillyflowers, or wallflowers, which were popular spring flowers.


Full title: John Gerarde, The Herball, [colophon: Edm. Bollifant for Bonham and John Norton], 1597.
(Copy with contemporary hand-colouring.)


Timeline

The timeline shows resources around this location over a number of years.

1570s
Henri Estienne, A mervaylous discourse upon... Katherine de Medici…, 1575 - title page
Henri Estienne, A mervaylous discourse upon... Katherine de Medici…, 1575 - title page

Shakespeare may have owned this book. Shakespeare purchased New Place, the largest ...

1590s
William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 1594, leaf F4v.
William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 1594, leaf F4v.

Shakespeare’s first published works. The long poem, Venus and Adonis, was ...

1610s
Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines, 1612 - Antony and Cleopatra, p. 922, detail.
Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines, 1612 - Antony and Cleopatra, p. 922, detail.

Shakespeare followed this description of Cleopatra. Shakespeare became very ...

1630s
William Shakespeare, Quartos, Love's Labour's Lost, 1631 - title page
William Shakespeare, Quartos, Love's Labour's Lost, 1631 - title page

A play for the Blackfriars Theatre: Shakespeare's Love’s Labour’s Lost. The ...

Share:


Donor ref:SR/OS 97.3 [827] (32/10508)

Source: The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - Library

Copyright information: Copyrights to all resources are retained by the individual rights holders. They have kindly made their collections available for non-commercial private study & educational use. Re-distribution of resources in any form is only permitted subject to strict adherence to the usage guidelines.