[52] Part I, Act II, Scene IV.
In Shakespeare's day the rose was enormously cultivated. In the gardens of Ely Place, the home of Queen Elizabeth's dashing lord chancellor, twenty bushels of roses were gathered annually—a good deal for the time.
"About thirty species of roses," writes Edmund Gosse, "were known to the Elizabethan gardeners, and most of them did particularly well in London until in the reign of James I, when the increasing smoke of coal-fires exterminated the most lovely and the most delicate species, the double yellow rose. Things grew rapidly worse in this respect, until Parkinson in despair, cried out: 'Neither herb, nor tree, will prosper since the use of sea-coal.' Up to that time in London, and afterwards in country-places, the rose preserved its vogue. It was not usually grown for pleasure, since the petals had a great commercial value; there was a brisk trade in dried roses and a precious sweet water was distilled from the damask rose. The red varieties of the rose were considered the best medicinally, and they produced that rose syrup which was so widely used both as a cordial and as an aperient. The fashion for keeping potpourri in dwelling-rooms became so prevalent that the native gardens could not supply enough, and dried yellow roses became a recognized import from Constantinople. We must think of the parlors of the ladies who saw Shakespeare's plays performed for the first time as all redolent with the perfume of dried, spiced and powdered rose-leaves." In "Sonnet LIV" Shakespeare says:
The rose looks fair, but fairer it we deem
For that sweet odor which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their maskèd buds discloses.
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made.
For twenty-seven centuries—and more—the rose has been considered queen of flowers. Her perfume, her color, her elegance, and her mystic fascination have won all hearts. Shakespeare says: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In one sense that is true; but we would not be willing to try another title, for the very word rose is a beautiful one and conjures up a particular and very special vision of sweetness and beauty.
Thousands and thousands of poems have been written in praise of this flower, ever since Sappho sang to her lyre the words "Ho! the rose! Ho! the rose!"
Sir Henry Wotton wrote:
You Violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the Spring were all your own,
What are you when the Rose is blown?
And Hood sang: