ROSES.
| (1) | Titania. | Some to kill cankers in the Musk-rose buds. |
| Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii, sc. 3 (3). | ||
| (2) | Titania. | And stick Musk-Roses in thy sleek, smooth head. |
| Ibid., act iv, sc. 1 (3). | ||
| (3) | Julia. | The air hath starved the Roses in her cheeks. |
| Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv, sc. 4 (159). | ||
| (4) | Song. | There will we make our beds of Roses And a thousand fragrant posies. |
| Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii, sc. 1 (19). | ||
| (5) | Autolycus. | Gloves as sweet as Damask Roses. |
| Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 3 (222). | ||
| (6) | Olivia. | Cæsario, by the Roses of the spring, By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything, I love thee so. |
| Twelfth Night, act iii, sc. 1 (161). | ||
| (7) | Diana. | When you have our Roses, You barely leave us thorns to prick ourselves And mock us with our bareness. |
| All's Well that Ends Well, act iv, sc. 2 (18). | ||
| (8) | Lord. | Let one attend him with a silver basin Full of Rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers. |
| Taming of the Shrew, Induction, sc. 1 (55). | ||
| (9) | Petruchio. | I'll say she looks as clear As morning Roses newly wash'd with dew. |
| Ibid., act ii, sc. 1 (173). | ||
| (10) | Tyrrell. | Their lips were four red Roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other. |
| Richard III, act iv, sc. 3 (12). | ||
| (11) | Friar. | The Roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes. |
| Romeo and Juliet, act iv, sc. 1 (99). | ||
| (12) | Romeo. | Remnants of packthread and old cakes of Roses Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. |
| Ibid., act v, sc. 1 (47). | ||
| (13) | Hamlet. | With two Provincial Roses on my razed shoes. |
| Hamlet, act iii, sc. 2 (287). | ||
| (14) | Laertes. | O Rose of May, Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! |
| Ibid., act iv, sc. 5 (157). | ||
| (15) | Duke. | For women are as Roses, whose fair flower Being once display'd doth fall that very hour. |
| Twelfth Night, act ii, sc. 4 (39). | ||
| (16) | Constance. | Of Nature's gifts, thou may'st with Lilies boast, And with the half-blown Rose. |
| King John, act iii, sc. 1 (153). | ||
| (17) | Queen. | But soft, but see, or rather do not see, My fair Rose wither. |
| Richard II, act v, sc. 1 (7). | ||
| (18) | Hotspur. | To put down Richard, that sweet lovely Rose, And plant this Thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke. |
| 1st Henry IV, act i, sc. 3 (175). | ||
| (19) | Hostess. | Your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any Rose. |
| 2nd Henry IV, act ii, sc. 4 (27). | ||
| (20) | York. | Then will I raise aloft the milk-white Rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed. |
| 2nd Henry VI, act i, sc. 1 (254). | ||
| (21) | Don John. | I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a Rose in his grace. |
| Much Ado About Nothing, act i, sc. 3 (27). | ||
| (22) | Theseus. | But earthlier happy is the Rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin Thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.[244:1] |
| Midsummer Night's Dream, act i, sc. 1 (76). | ||
| (23) | Lysander. | How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the Roses there do fade so fast? |
| Midsummer Night's Dream, act i, sc. 1 (128). | ||
| (24) | Titania. | The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson Rose. |
| Ibid., act ii, sc. 1 (107). | ||
| (25) | Thisbe. | Of colour like the red Rose on triumphant Brier. |
| Ibid., act iii, sc. 1 (95). | ||
| (26) | Biron. | Why should I joy in any abortive mirth? At Christmas I no more desire a Rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth, But like of each thing that in season grows.[245:1] |
| Love's Labour's Lost, act i, sc. 1 (105). | ||
| (27) | King (reads). | So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the Rose. |
| Ibid., act iv, sc. 3 (26). | ||
| (28) | Boyet. | Blow like sweet Roses in this summer air. |
| Princess. | How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood. | |
| Boyet. | Fair ladies mask'd are Roses in their bud; Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels veiling clouds, or Roses blown. | |
| Ibid., act v, sc. 2 (293). | ||
| (29) | Touchstone. | He that sweetest Rose will find, Must find Love's prick and Rosalind. |
| As You Like It, act iii, sc. 2 (117). | ||
| (30) | Countess. | This Thorn Doth to our Rose of youth rightly belong. |
| All's Well that Ends Well, act i, sc. 3 (135). | ||
| (31) | Bastard. | My face so thin, That in mine ear I durst not stick a Rose. |
| King John, act i, sc. 1 (141). | ||
| (32) | Antony. | Tell him he wears the Rose Of youth upon him. |
| Antony and Cleopatra, act iii, sc. 13 (20). | ||
| (33) | Cleopatra. | Against the blown Rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds. |
| Ibid. (39). | ||
| (34) | Boult. | For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shallsee a Rose; and she were a Rose indeed! |
| Pericles, act iv, sc. 6 (37). | ||
| (35) | Gower. | Even her art sisters the natural Roses. |
| Ibid., act v, chorus (7). (See Cherry, No. [5].) | ||
| (36) | Juliet. | What's in a name? That which we call a Rose By any other name would smell as sweet. |
| Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 2 (43). | ||
| (37) | Ophelia. | The expectancy and Rose of the fair state. |
| Hamlet, act iii, sc. 1 (160). | ||
| (38) | Hamlet. | Such an act . . . takes off the Rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there. |
| Ibid., act iii, sc. 4 (40). | ||
| (39) | Othello. | When I have pluck'd the Rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It needs must wither. I'll smell it on the tree. |
| Othello, act v, sc. 2 (13). | ||
| (40) | Timon. | Rose-cheeked youth. |
| Timon of Athens, act iv, sc. 3 (86). | ||
| (41) | Othello. | Thou young and Rose-lipp'd cherubim. |
| Othello, act iv, sc. 2 (63). | ||
| (42) | Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royall in their smells alone But in their hue. | |
| Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song. | ||
| (43) | Emilia. | Of all flowres Methinks a Rose is best. |
| Woman. | Why, gentle madam? | |
| Emilia. | It is the very Embleme of a maide. For when the west wind courts her gently, How modestly she blows, and paints the Sun With her chaste blushes? When the north winds neere her, Rude and impatient, then, like Chastity, Shee locks her beauties in her bud againe, And leaves him to base Briers. | |
| Ibid., act ii, sc. 2 (160). | ||
| (44) | Wooer. | With cherry lips and cheekes of Damaske Roses. |
| Ibid., act iv, sc. 2 (95). | ||
| (45) | See Nettles, No. [13]. | |
| (46) | Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. | |
| Sonnet xxxv. | ||
| (47) | The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour that doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the Roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked 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 odours made. | |
| Sonnet liv. | ||
| (48) | Why should poor beauty indirectly seek Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true? | |
| Ibid. lxvii. | ||
| (49) | Shame, like a canker in the fragrant Rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name. | |
| Ibid. xcv. | ||
| (50) | Nor did I wonder at the Lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion of the Rose. | |
| Ibid. xcviii. | ||
| (51) | The Roses fearfully in thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath. | |
| Ibid. xcix. | ||
| (52) | I have seen Roses damask'd, red and white, But no such Roses see I in her cheeks. | |
| Ibid. cxxx. | ||
| (53) | More white and red than dove and Roses are. | |
| Venus and Adonis (10). | ||
| (54) | What though the Rose has prickles? yet 'tis plucked. | |
| Ibid. (574). | ||
| (55) | Who, when he lived, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the Rose, smell to the Violet. | |
| Ibid. (935). | ||
| (56) | Their silent war of Lilies and of Roses. | |
| Lucrece (71). | ||
| (57) | O how her fear did make her colour rise, First red as Roses that on lawn we lay, Then white as lawn, the Roses took away. | |
| Ibid. (257). | ||
| (58) | That even for anger makes the Lily pale, And the red Rose blush at her own disgrace. | |
| Ibid. (477). | ||
| (59) | I know what Thorns the growing Rose defends. | |
| Ibid. (492). | ||
| (60) | Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase. | |
| Venus and Adonis. (3). | ||
| (61) | A sudden pale, Like lawn being spread upon the blushing Rose, Usurps her cheek. | |
| Ibid. (589). | ||
| (62) | That beauty's Rose might never die. | |
| Sonnet i. | ||
| (63) | Nothing this wide universe I callSave thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all. | |
| Ibid. cix. | ||
| (64) | Rosy lips and cheeks Within time's bending sickle's compass come. | |
| Ibid. cxvi. | ||
| (65) | Sweet Rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded, Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring! | |
| The Passionate Pilgrim (131). | ||
In addition to these many passages, there are perhaps thirty more in which the Rose is mentioned with reference to the Red and White Roses of the houses of York and Lancaster. To quote these it would be necessary to extract an entire act, which is very graphic, but too long. I must, therefore, content myself with the beginning and the end of the chief scene, and refer the reader who desires to see it in extenso to "1st Henry VI.," act ii, sc. 4. The scene is in the Temple Gardens, and Plantagenet and Somerset thus begin the fatal quarrel—
| Plantagenet. | Let him that is a true-born gentleman And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this Brier pluck a White Rose with me. | |
| Somerset. | Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a Red Rose from off this Thorn with me. |
And Warwick's wise conclusion on the whole matter is—
This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
There are further allusions to the same Red and White Roses in "3rd Henry VI.," act i, sc. 1 and 2, act ii, sc. 5, and act v, sc. 1; "1st Henry VI.," act iv, sc. 1; and "Richard III.," act v, sc. 4.
There is no flower so often mentioned by Shakespeare as the Rose, and he would probably consider it the queen of flowers, for it was so deemed in his time. "The Rose doth deserve the cheefest and most principall place among all flowers whatsoever, being not onely esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell, but also because it is the honore and ornament of our English Scepter."—Gerard. Yet the kingdom of the Rose even then was not undisputed; the Lily was always its rival (see [Lily]), for thus sang Walter de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century—
"En ço verger troveroums les flurs
Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel)
Les herbes ausi pur medicine
La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie)
Liz vaut per royne, Rose pur piz."