A Shakespearean botanical
Willes, Margaret2015
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When Falstaff calls upon the sky to rain potatoes in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', he highlights the belief that the exotic vegetable, recently introduced to England from the Americas, was an aphrodisiac. In 'Romeo and Juliet', Lady Capulet calls for quinces to make pies for the marriage feast, knowing that the fragrant fruit was connected with weddings and fertility. Shakespeare's contemporaries would have been familiar with such ripe symbolism in part due to herbals, tomes filled with detailed botanical descriptions consulted to deepen knowledge of the plants of the day. 'A Shakespearean Botanical' follows in the tradition of the medieval and Renaissance herbal, touring the Bard's remarkable knowledge of the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers of Tudor and Jacobean England through 50 quotations from his plays and verse poems.
Main title:
A Shakespearean botanical / Margaret Willes.
Imprint:
Oxford : Bodleian Library, 2015.Oxford : Bodleian Library, 2015.
Collation:
128 pages ; 19 cm
ISBN:
9781851244379 (hbk)
Dewey class:
822.33
Language:
English
Added title:
Subject:
BRN:
1450340