There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by examining the twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak especially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's familiar trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon, commonly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades. Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it as the type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he copies Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the while. He knew the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it (Troilus and Cressida, i, 3):
"... checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Deflect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth."
Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has handled knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the persistent base of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines.
All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes and used them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the hoariness on the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as in the king, and beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural objects, however, the poet is not the original observer. He often uses current opinions, fancies, dreams, for these also were the realities in his day, quite as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There is concerning plants a sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of years have sometimes contributed to the reputation born by a single species. A curious illustration is found in what Shakespeare has to say about the mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5):
"Give me to drink mandragora.
Why, madam?
That I might sleep out this great gap of time."
Othello, iii, 3:
"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of the Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3):
"Alack, alack! is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears?"