“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o’ Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.
- - Hamlet, Act IV, Sc V - -
”
There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o’ Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.
It’s Shakespeare’s 450th birthday today. To mark the anniversary, the Royal Shakespeare Company is starting an ambitious two-year tour of Hamlet that will visit every single country in the world.
In this passage, Ophelia, a young noblewoman of Denmark, driven mad by the rejection of Hamlet and grief over the murder of her father Polonius, strews flowers from a posy she has collected. Each flower has a symbolic meaning, which would probably have been commonly known in Shakespeare’s day. Ophelia is later found drowned, after climbing a willow tree and falling to her death when the branch breaks.
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To The Greenwood Tree Blog A magical anthology of trees, flowers, rocks and creatures and the shifting of the seasons. Folk traditions old & new, ancient goddesses & gods. How to read the past and tell a fortune.
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