[58] Brake, or bracken, fern.
WILTON, FROM DE CAUX
WILTON GARDENS TO-DAY
HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera perfolium). Delicious name—honeysuckle! And truly this is one of "the sweetest flowers for scent that blows." It takes its name because of the honey dew found on it, so old writers say. Romantic is its other name, "woodbine," suggesting sylvan spots and mossy beds, where cool-rooted flowers grow, such as the "nodding violet." Shakespeare knew what he was about when he enwreathed and entwined Titania's canopy with "luscious woodbine" in loving union with the equally delicious eglantine. The honeysuckle is a flower that belongs particularly to moonlight and to fairy-time.
In "Much Ado About Nothing" Hero gives the command:[59]
Good Margaret, run into the parlor and whisper to Beatrice
And bid her steal into the pleachèd bower,
Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter.
[59] Act III, Scene I.
A bower covered with the intense, yet subtle, perfume of the honeysuckle, doubly sweet in the hot sun that had ripened the blossoms and drawn out their inmost sweetness, was just the place to send "saucy Beatrice" for the purpose of lighting the flame of love for Benedick, and just the place to send, a little later, the cynical Benedick for the purpose of awakening his interest in the "Lady Disdain." Shakespeare evidently knew that the honeysuckle is the flower of ardent lovers, and so he framed his pleachèd bower with these sweet-scented blossoms. The French have a tender name for the flower, cher feu (dear flame), because it is given by lovers to one another. The other French name, chèvre feuille, is derived from the Latin caprifolium (goat-leaf), which may have been given to it because the plant leaps over high rocks and precipices, where only goats and others of the cloven-footed tribe dare venture. The honeysuckle in Shakespeare's day was a favorite remedy for wounds in the head. Witches also valued it for their sorcery. According to sorcerers and astrologers this plant was under the rule of Mercury.