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Distributed for Bodleian Library Publishing

A Shakespearean Botanical

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 fifty quotations from his plays and verse poems. Each of the entries is beautifully illustrated with hand-colored renderings from the work of Shakespeare’s contemporary, herbalist John Gerard, making an appropriate pairing with his writing, along with a brief text setting the quotation within the context of the medicine, cooking, and gardening of the time.

The book’s many beautifully reproduced images are a pleasure to look at, and Margaret Willes’s well-chosen quotations and expert knowledge of Shakespeare’s England provide readers with a fascinating insight into daily life. The book will make an inspiring addition to the Shakespeare lover’s bookshelf, as well as capitvate anyone with a passion for plants or botanical art.

128 pages | 60 color plates | 4 1/2 x 7 1/4 | © 2015

Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature


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Reviews

“We closed Willes’s book imagining the Bard tending an allotment in Stratford-upon-Avon, with marigolds—opening ‘to adorn the day’ (The Rape of Lucrece), closing ‘with the sun’ (The Winter’s Tale)—nodding violets, and thoughtful pansies. A Shakespearean Botanical would make a better Christmas gift . . . than deadly nightshade.”

Times Literary Supplement

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Plants
Chronology
Notes
Further Reading
Picture Credit
Index

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