In Quarles’s “Argalus and Parthenia” (1726, bk. iii.) a knight is introduced, whose
“horse was black as jet,
His furniture was round about beset
With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree.”
Formerly coffins were frequently made of cypress wood, a practice to which Shakespeare probably alludes in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), where the Clown says: “In sad cypress let me be laid.” Some, however, prefer[487] understanding cypress to mean “a shroud of cyprus or cypress”—a fine, transparent stuff, similar to crape, either white or black, but more commonly the latter.[488] Douce[489] thinks that the expression “laid” seems more applicable to a coffin than to a shroud, and also adds that the shroud is afterwards expressly mentioned by itself.
Daffodil. The daffodil of Shakespeare is the wild daffodil which grows so abundantly in many parts of England. Perdita, in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), mentions a little piece of weather-lore, and tells us how
“daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”
And Autolycus, in the same play (iv. 3), sings thus:
“When daffodils begin to peer,—
With, heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year.”
Darnel. This plant, like the cockle, was used in Shakespeare’s day to denote any hurtful weed. Newton,[490] in his “Herbal to the Bible,” says that “under the name of cockle and darnel is comprehended all vicious, noisome, and unprofitable graine, encombring and hindering good corne.” Thus Cordelia, in “King Lear” (iv. 4), says:
“Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.”
According to Gerarde, “darnel hurteth the eyes, and maketh them dim, if it happen either in corne for breade or drinke.” Hence, it is said, originated the old proverb, “lolio victitare”—applied to such as were dim-sighted. Steevens considers that Pucelle, in the following passage from “1 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), alludes to this property of the darnel—meaning to intimate that the corn she carried with her had produced the same effect on the guards of Rouen, otherwise they would have seen through her disguise and defeated her stratagem: