II
"Daffodils that Come Before the Swallow Dares"
DAFFODIL (Narcissus pseudo-narcissus).
When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
Is the opening verse that Autolycus sings so gaily in "The Winter's Tale."[31] The daffodil was "carefully nourished up" in Elizabethan gardens, as the saying went. Before Shakespeare's time a great number of daffodils had been introduced into England from various parts of the Continent. Gerard describes twenty-four different species, "all and every one of them in great abundance in our London gardens."
[31] Act IV, Scene II.
There were many varieties both rare and ordinary. Parkinson particularly distinguishes the true daffodils, or narcissus, from the "Bastard Daffodils," or pseudo narcissus; and he gives their differences as follows:
"It consisteth only in the flower and chiefly in the middle cup, or chalice; for that we do, in a manner only, account those to be Pseudo Narcissus, Bastard Daffodils, whose middle cup is altogether as long, and sometimes a little longer than, the outer leaves that do encompass it, so that it seemeth rather like a trunk, or a long nose, than a cup or chalice, such as almost all the Narcissi, or true Daffodils, have. Of the Bastard tribe Parkinson gives the great yellow Spanish Daffodil; the Mountain Bastard of divers kinds; the early straw-colored; the great white Spanish; the greatest Spanish white; the two lesser White Spanish; our common English wild Bastard Daffodil; the six-cornered; the great double yellow, or John Tradescant's great Rose Daffodil; Mr. Wilmer's great double Daffodil; the great double yellow Spanish, or Parkinson's Daffodil; the great double French Bastard; the double English Bastard, or Gerard's double Daffodil; the great white Bastard Rush Daffodil, or Junquilia; the greater yellow Junquilia; and many others."
Then he adds:
"The Pseudo narcissus Angliens vulgaris is so common in all England, both in copses, woods and orchards, that I might well forbear the description thereof. It hath three, or four, grayish leaves, long and somewhat narrow, among which riseth up the stalk about a span high, or little higher, bearing at the top, out of a skinny husk (as all other Daffodils have), one flower, somewhat large, having the six leaves that stand like wings, of a pale yellow color, and the long trunk in the middle of a faire yellow with the edges, or brims, a little crumpled, or uneven. After the flower is past, it beareth a round head, seeming three square, containing round black seed."
Shakespeare knew all of these varieties very well and had many of them in mind when he wrote the beautiful lines for Perdita, who exclaims: