Culture factsheet
Shakespeare Plants (D-H)
Some of the wild plants in the works of Shakespeare (based on
Savage 1926, Shakespeare’s Flora and Folklore)
Daffodils (Narcissus) (Narcissus species) - Found in The Winters Tale,
Act IV, Scene 2 & 3;Two Noble Kinsmen, Act II, Scene 2 & Act IV, Scene I;
Venus & Adonis, 160
Daisies (Bellis perennis) - Found in Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5 & Act IV, Scene
7; The Rape of Lucerne, verse 390; Love’s Labours Lost, Act V, Scene 2;
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act I, Scene I (Floral Song);
Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2
Love’s Labour’s Lost (Act V, Scene 2)
‘When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And ladys-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight’
Damsons (Prunus domestica) - Found in King Henry VI, Part II, Act II,
Scene I
Darnel (Lolium temulentum) - a grass of arable fields, grain
contaminated with darnel was supposed to bring about giddiness in those
who ate it - Found in King Lear, Act IV, Scene 4;
King Henry VI, Part I, Act III, Scene 2 (Joan of Arc);
King Henry V, Act V, Scene 2
Henry VI, Part I, Act III, Scene 2
Joan of Arc: ‘Good morrow gallants. Want ye
corn for bread?
I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast
Before he’ll buy again at such a rate.
‘Twas full of darnel: do you like the taste?’
Burgundy: ‘Scoff on, vile fiend, and shameless courtesan!
I trust, ere long, to choke thee with thine own,
And make thee curse the harvest of that corn.’
Dewberries (Rubus caesius) - Found in A Midsummer-Nights Dream, Act III, Scene I
Docks (Rumex species) - King Henry V, Act V, Scene 2
Dogberry (Dog Wood) (Cornus sanguinea) - Found in Much Ado About Nothing,
Act III, Scene 3
Eglantine (Sweet Briar) (Rosa rubiginosa) - Found in A MidsummerNights Dream, Act II, Scene 2; Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2
Elder (Sambucus nigra) - Found in Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 4;
Loves Labours Lost, Act V, Scene 2; Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2;
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene 3; King Henry V, Act IV, Scene I
(children’s use of elder as a spring or pop gun)
Elm (Ulmus species) - Found in A Midsummer Nights Dream, Act IV, Scene 1
Eringoes (Sea Holly) (Eryngium maritimum) - the candied roots of the
sea holly were a great delicacy in Tudor England and Colchester was a
centre of eringo production. Found in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V,
Scene 5
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V, Scene 5 (Falstaff)
‘My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes;
let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves’;
hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes;
let there come a tempest of provocation,
I will shelter me here.’
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) - Found in King Henry IV, Part 2, Act
II, Scene 4; Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5
Ferns - Found in King Henry IV, Part I, Act II, Scene I
Fig (Ficus carica) - Found in Othello Act I, Scene 3;
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream Act III, Scene I;
King Henry IV, Part 2, Act V, Scene 3;
Anthony & Cleopatra Act I, Scene 2;
King Henry VI, Part II, Act II, Scene 3
Flag (could be Acorus calamus or any tall water plant, reed, rush, sedge or
bulrush) - Found in Anthony & Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 4
Flax (Linum usitatissum) - Found in The Two Noble Kinsmen Act V, Scene 3;
King Lear, Act III, Scene 7; King Henry VI, Part II, Act V, Scene 2;
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V, Scene 5; Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 3;
The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene 3; Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5
Fumiter (Fumitory) (Fumaria species) - Found in King Henry V, Act V, Scene 2
King Lear, Act IV, Scene 4
King Lear, Act IV, Scene IV (Cordelia)
‘Alack, ‘tis he:
Why, he was met
Even now
As mad as the vex’d sea;
Singing aloud;
Crown’d with rank fumiter, and furrow-weeds,
With hoar-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.’
Furze, Gorse, Goss (Ulex europaeus) - Found in The Tempest, Act IV,
Scene I
Gooseberry (RIbes uva-#) - King Henry IV, Part II, Act I, Scene 2
Grasses — separate mentions of grass & hay
Harebell—Savage believes that the ‘azur’d harebell’ in Cymbelline is
the bluebell (Hyancinthoides non-scripta)
Cymbeline Act IV, Scene 2
‘Whilst summer lasts, and I live here Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave, thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, not
The azur’d hare-bell, like thy veins’
Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) - Found in King
Henry VI, Part III, Act II, Scene 5; As You Like It, Act
III, Scene 2
Hazelnuts & Filberts (Corylus avellana) - Found
in The Taming of the Shrew, Act II,
Tempest, Act II, Scene 2
Scene 2; The
Heath (Calluna vulgaris) - Found in The Tempest, Act I, Scene I
Hemlock (Conium maculatum) - Found in Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I;
King Lear, Act IV, Scene 4; King Henry V, Act V, Scene 2
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I (Third Witch)
‘Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw, and gulf,
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock, digg’d i’ the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall or goat, and slips of yew,
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips.’
Hemp (Cannabis sativa) - Found in King Henry V, Act III, Scene 6
Holly (Ilex aquifolium) - Found in As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7
Honeysuckle (Woodbine) (Lonicera periclymenum) - Found in A
Midsummer-Nights Dream, Act IV, Scene 1; Much Ado About Nothing, Act
III, Scene I
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene I (Oberon)
‘I pray thee, give it me.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.’
Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalus) - one of the plants
mentioned in the Bible as a purifier. Found in Othello,
Act I, Scene 3