"Steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter" (act iii, sc. 1).
Midsummer Night's Dream. The name marks the season, and there is a profusion of flowers to mark it too. It may seem strange to us to have "Apricocks" at the end of June, but in speaking of the seasons of Shakespeare and others it should be remembered that their days were twelve days later than ours of the same names; and if to this is added the variation of a fortnight or three weeks, which may occur in any season in the ripening of a fruit, "apricocks" might well be sometimes gathered on their Midsummer day. But I do not think even this elasticity will allow for the ripening of mulberries and purple grapes at that time, and scarcely of figs. The scene, however, being laid in Athens and in fairyland, must not be too minutely criticized in this respect. But with the English plants the time is more accurately observed. There is the "green corn;" the "dewberries," which in a forward season may be gathered early in July; the "lush woodbine" in the fulness of its lushness at that time; the pansies, or "love-in-idleness," which (says Gerard) "flower not onely in the spring, but for the most part all sommer thorowe, even untill autumne;" the "sweet musk-roses and the eglantine," also in flower then, though the musk-roses, being rather late bloomers, would show more of the "musk-rose buds" in which Titania bid the elves "kill cankers" than of the full-blown flower; while the thistle would be exactly in the state for "Mounsieur Cobweb" to "kill a good red-hipped humble bee on the top of it" to "bring the honey-bag" to Bottom. Besides these there are the flowers on the "bank where the wild thyme blows; where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," and I think the distinction worth noting between the "blowing" of the wild thyme, which would then be at its fullest, and the "growing" of the oxlips and the violet, which had passed their time of blowing, but the living plants continued "growing."[386:1]
Love's Labour's Lost. The general tone of the play points to the full summer, the very time when we should expect to find Boyet thinking "to close his eyes some half an hour under the cool shade of a sycamore" (act v, sc. 2).
All's Well that Ends Well. There is a pleasant note of the season in—
"The time will bring on summer,
When briars will have leaves as well as thorns,
And be as sweet as sharp" (act iv, sc. 4);
but probably that is only a proverbial expression of hopefulness, and cannot be pushed further.
Winter's Tale. There seems some little confusion in the season of the fourth act—the feast for the sheep-shearing, which is in the very beginning of summer—yet Perdita dates the season as "the year growing ancient"—
"Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter"—
and gives Camillo the "flowers of middle summer." The flowers named are all summer flowers; carnations or gilliflowers, lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, and marigold.