Antony and Cleopatra. The figs and fig-leaves brought to Cleopatra give a slight indication of the season of act v.[388:1]
Cymbeline. Here there is a more distinct plant-note of the season of act i, sc. 3. The queen and her ladies, "whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather flowers," which at the end of the scene we are told are violets, cowslips, and primroses, the flowers of the spring. In the fourth act Lucius gives orders to "find out the prettiest daisied plot we can," to make a grave for Cloten; but daisies are too long in flower to let us attempt to fix a date by them.
Hamlet. In this play the season intended is very distinctly marked by the flowers. The first act must certainly be some time in the winter, though it may be the end of winter or early spring—"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold." Then comes an interval of two months or more, and Ophelia's madness must be placed in the early summer, i.e., in the end of May or the beginning of June; no other time will all the flowers mentioned fit, but for that time they are exact. The violets were "all withered;" but she could pick fennel and columbines, daisies and pansies in abundance, while the evergreen rosemary and rue ("which we may call Herb of Grace on Sundays") would be always ready. It was the time of year when trees were in their full leafage, and so the "willow growing aslant the brook would show its hoar leaves in the glassy stream," while its "slivers," would help her in making "fantastic garlands" "of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples," or "dead men's fingers," all of which she would then be able to pick in abundance in the meadows, but which in a few weeks would be all gone. Perhaps the time of year may have suggested to Laertes that pretty but sad address to his sister,
"O Rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!"
Titus Andronicus. There is a plant-note in act ii, sc. 2—
"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe."
Romeo and Juliet. A slight plant-note of the season may be detected in the nightly singing of the nightingale in the pomegranate tree in the third act.
King Lear. The plants named point to one season only, the spring. At no other time could the poor mad king have gone singing aloud,
"Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With harlock, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
And darnel."
I think this would also be the time for gathering the fresh shoots of the samphire; but I do not know this for certain.[389:1]