The romeo and juliet garden
video guide transcript
[Shakespeare]: Here is the Romeo and Juliet Garden.
[Interlocutor]: Which plants, Will Shakespeare, do you name in Romeo and Juliet?
[Shakespeare]: In this play we have wormwood and pepper and thorn; plantain and hazelnuts; rosemary, quinces, and dates; Bitter Sweeting (an apple); medlars and poperin pears and pomegranates; mandrakes, sycamore, willow, and yew; rushes and pinks and certainly roses.
[Interlocutor]: Why do you say “certainly” roses? I realize that a rose is the national flower of England. But this play isn’t about England or nationalism. It’s about star-crossed lovers in Verona, which is in Italy. Yet it contains one of your most famous lines about roses, when Juliet says:
Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
[Shakespeare]: Ay, just there you have it: Juliet’s words link the rose to the conflict between her house, the Capulets, and Romeo’s house, the Montagues. What’s in the name of a rose? Or might we also ask: what’s in the color of a rose? For thirty years the opposition of red rose and white bespoke the bloody strife of the War of Roses in England. But it was neither politic nor wise to speak ill of the government or the nobility. The Master of the Revels looked over every play; if he found seeds of sedition, the play was forbidden. Think of the words which begin this play:
Two households, both alike in dignity,
...From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Are those opposing houses the Capulets and the Montagues, in Verona? or are they York and Lancaster, on the precious soul of England? Oh, no, surely not; our play would not defame the English for long, bloody, wasteful civil conflicts. No, no; our play tells of foreign ways, of the cruel and stubborn follies of those hot Italians. See how the deadly quarrel in Verona leads only with the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, each the only child and heir of their great house.
But our playgoers were quite shrewd enough to hear in this tale the echo of the Wars of Roses. Those wars ended only at the death of the last York OR Lancaster contender for the throne: Richard III, killed by Henry VII at Bosworth in 1485. Henry: he began a new royal line, the Tudors. He took neither the white rose nor the red, but instead the Tudor rose, which partook of both colors.
[Interlocutor]: And your Queen Elizabeth descended from him, didn’t she?
[Shakespeare]: Yes, she was a Tudor, the granddaughter of Henry VII. Our Virgin Queen was one of the most successful monarchs in all of English history.
[Interlocutor]: I have another question: you included pinks among the plants in this play. Now, there’s an exchange between Mercutio and Romeo in the second act, where Mercutio says:
Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy
and Romeo comes back with
Pink for flower.
What’s that about?
[Shakespeare]: It’s a play upon the words. These two friends are a having a cheerful contest of wits. To be “the pink” is to be the very best. Mercutio proclaims himself supreme in courtesy. Romeo turns to another meaning of the word: “pink” is the name of a flower; we also called it a gillyflower. Romeo points to the shoes that he is still wearing from last night’s dance; he says,
My pump is well-flowered.
The courtiers of my time often wore on their shoes large knots of silk ribbon, which they called flowers, or roses. Thus Romeo’s reply means that his shoes are “the pink” too, and so Mercutio’s claim makes him no better than a shoe. Mercutio replies with another play, this time about wearing out soles of dancing shoes, but Romeo caps that one also, and the friends continue in their witty battle.
[Interlocutor]: Are there other jokes about plants in this play?
[Shakespeare]: Oh, yes. Battles of wit were much in fashion. Romeo and Mercutio have scarce concluded their volley of wit but Juliet’s nurse comes in. She praises Juliet to Romeo and tries to tell him of a piece of Juliet’s wit. She asks,
Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin with a letter?
(that is, the letter R). But her wit is broad rather than sharp. There is rosemary here in this garden, and rosemary is for remembrance; but the nurse cannot quite remember the finer points of Juliet’s wit. All that she can report is:
She hath the prettiest sententious of it,
you and the rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.
It’s Mercutio who is your man for plays upon words. He hardly speaks two sentences together without a play upon words. When there is no one else to taunt, he pretends that his gentle friend Benvolio is of hot blood and ever seeking a reason to draw his sword:
Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts,
he says,
having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.
Mercutio jests even as he is dying. He tells Romeo he is peppered—that is to say, pierced all over like food sprinkled with black pepper. This was a much-prized spice which came to us from halfway round the world.