The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare — A Reader’s Guide

How Ellacombe Organizes the Evidence

Each chapter in The Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare is built around a single plant or group of related plants. The pattern is consistent: a numbered list of Shakespearean quotations, each keyed to play, act, scene, and line; then a prose section that identifies the plant botanically, discusses its Elizabethan uses, and often adds literary or historical parallels. The plum entry, for example, runs from King John (“Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will / Give it a Plum”) through Hamlet’s “Plum-tree gum” to Falstaff’s “stewed Prune.” Ellacombe then explains that damsons were considered delicacies, cites a fifteenth-century morality play in which wax damsons substituted for real ones, and notes that the garden plum is a cultivated variety of the wild sloe—a shrub Shakespeare never names, despite its proverbial blackness.

This method means the book can be read straight through or dipped into by plant name. The quotations are the anchor; the commentary is the expansion. Readers coming to the text for the first time will find that the numbered quotations act as a miniature concordance, while the following paragraphs provide the context that makes the botanical references vivid.

The Range of Sources Beyond Shakespeare

Ellacombe does not limit himself to the plays and poems. His plum discussion reaches back to Amys and Amylion (“not one Sloe!”) and a fifteenth-century French morality play, La Nef de Santé, where damsons are served as delicacies. He draws on Saxon and Early English herbals, classical authors, and contemporary gardening manuals. This breadth is typical of the whole work: Ellacombe treats Shakespeare as a gateway to a wider world of plant lore, not as a closed canon.

For a first-time reader, this interleaving of sources can be both enriching and disorienting. The book assumes a patient audience willing to follow a footnote into a medieval romance or a botanical classification. The payoff is a layered understanding of how Shakespeare’s audience would have known these plants—not just as literary symbols but as living things in gardens, hedgerows, and kitchens.

Botanical Precision and Elizabethan Practice

Ellacombe is careful to give the scientific name for each plant, often with a note on subspecies. Under plums, he distinguishes Prunus communis domestica from the wild sloe (Prunus communis subsp. spinosa), and explains that the garden plum is not indigenous to England but likely Roman-introduced. This botanical exactness sits alongside practical observations: blackthorn staves were used in quarterstaff play, and the sloe gave rise to proverbs like “as black as a Sloe” or “not worth a Sloe.”

The book thus serves two purposes simultaneously: it identifies what Shakespeare actually meant by a given plant name, and it reconstructs the everyday uses and associations that the name would have carried for Elizabethan audiences. Readers interested in historical gardening will find details of cultivation and variety; those focused on literary interpretation will find the symbolic weight of each plant clarified.

What the Excerpts Reveal About the Book’s Structure

The excerpts provided cover only a small portion of the full text—the plum entry and the front matter—but they reveal the book’s consistent architecture. Each plant entry is self-contained, with its own heading, quotations, and commentary. The front matter includes press notices that praise the book’s accuracy and breadth, and a table of contents that lists dozens of plants alphabetically. The overall work runs to over 135,000 words, suggesting that the plum entry is typical in its thoroughness.

For a first reading, the best approach is to pick a plant you know from Shakespeare—roses, violets, or rosemary—and read that entry straight through. The numbered quotations will feel familiar; the commentary will add depth. The book does not require sequential reading, and its alphabetical arrangement makes it easy to jump from one plant to another. The index of plays at the back (not shown in the excerpts) also allows a reader to start from a specific play and find every plant mentioned in it.

Ellacombe’s work is best used as a reference you read in fragments, not a narrative you follow from start to finish. Let a single plant or a single play be your entry point. The quotations will ground you in Shakespeare’s text; the commentary will lead you into herbals, medieval romances, and garden history. The book rewards curiosity more than systematic study, and its Victorian patience with digression is part of its charm.

That rainy afternoon, I kept returning to Ellacombe’s notes on rosemary—how Shakespeare used it for remembrance, for weddings and graves alike. The book felt like a quiet garden in itself. Later, half-dreaming, I found myself turning pages of The flowers and gardens of Japan — Inside the Classic, where cherry blossoms carry the same fragile weight of joy and farewell. No connection was intended, yet the seasons seemed to speak to each other.