The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear, Henry Nicholson Ellacombe [read with me .TXT] 📗

[4:1] Perhaps the most noteworthy plant omitted is Tobacco--Shakespeare must have been well acquainted with it, not only as every one in his day knew of it, but as a friend and companion of Ben Jonson, he must often have been in the company of smokers. Ben Jonson has frequent allusions to it, and almost all the sixteenth-century writers have something to say about it; but Shakespeare never names the herb, or alludes to it in any way whatever.

[4:2] It seems probable that the Lily of the Valley was not recognized as a British plant in Shakespeare's time, and was very little grown even in gardens. Turner says, "Ephemer[=u] is called in duch meyblumle, in french Muguet. It groweth plentuously in Germany, but not in England that ever I coulde see, savinge in my Lordes gardine at Syon. The Poticaries in Germany do name it Lilium C[=o]vallium, it may be called in englishe May Lilies."--Names of Herbes, 1548. Coghan in 1596 says much the same: "I say nothing of them