Othello, act i, sc. 3 (296).
Milton and many other writers used the word in this its original sense; and Johnson explains it "to cultivate by manual labour," according to its literal derivation. In one passage Shakespeare uses the word somewhat in the modern sense—
| | Carlisle. | The blood of English shall manure the ground. |
| Richard II, act iv, sc. 1 (137). |
But generally he and the writers of that and the next century expressed the operation more simply and plainly, as "covering with ordure," or as in the English Bible, "I shall dig about it and dung it."
C. Grafting.
| (1) | Buckingham. | Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants. |
| Richard III, act iii, sc. 7 (127). |
| |
| (2) | Dauphin. | O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us,
The emptying of our fathers' luxury,
Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,
And overlook their grafters? |
| Henry V, act iii, sc. 5 (5). |
| |
| (3) | King. | His plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear. |
| All's Well that Ends Well, act i, sc. 2 (53). |
| |
| (4) | Perdita. | The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our Carnations and streak'd Gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; I care not
To get slips of them. |
| | Polixenes. | Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them? |
| | Perdita. | For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating Nature. |
| | Polixenes. | Say there be;
Yet Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature. |
| | Perdita. | So it is.
|
| | Polixenes. | Then make your garden rich in Gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards. |
| | Perdita. | I'll not put
The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them. |
| Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 4 (81). |
The various ways of propagating plants by grafts, cuttings, slips, and artificial impregnation (all mentioned in the above passages), as used in Shakespeare's day, seem to have been exactly like those of our own time, and so they need no further comment.
FOOTNOTES:
[353:1] The Act 31 Eliz. c. 7, enacts that "noe person shall within this Realme of England make buylde or erect any Buyldinge or Howsinge . . . . as a Cottage for habitation . . . . unlesse the same person do assigne and laye to the same Cottage or Buyldinge fower acres of Grounde at the least . . . to be contynuallie occupied and manured therewith." Gerard's Chapter on Vines is headed, "Of the manured Vine."
