King Lear, [4.4.1-8]. Cord.
……….“Why, he was met even now
……….As mad as the vex’d sea, singing aloud,
……….Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
……….With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flow’rs,
……….Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
……….In our sustaining corn. A century send forth!
……….Search every acre in the high-grown field,
……….And bring him to our eye.”
1) Furrow-weed and Hardock appear only in King Lear and only in this speech;
2) Mention of Darnel occurs only in 1 Henry 6 (a satirical remark by Pucelle) and in Henry 5 (the “un-pruned garden” speech of Burgundy);
3) Cuckoo flowers appear elsewhere only in the “spring song” of Love’s Labor’s Lost;
4) Nettle appears semi-frequently in Shakespeare and corn is among his most frequently named plants;
5) fumiter appears elsewhere only in the Burgundy speech of Henry 5;
6) hemlock appears only in the Burgundy speech, and as part of the witch’s potion in Macbeth.
7) if this dating is accurate a good 8 or nine years occurred between Shakespeare’s first mention of darnel and his second, and another seven or eight years between his second and his third.
8) the only point of similarity, in respect of plants, between Lear’s cornet and Ophelia’s garland is the nettle.(Ophelia’s garland–below– has fewer plants)
9) In the 1 Henry 6 mention of darnel, Pucelle enters Rouen disguised as a poor farmer trading corn and, after achieving her aims, scoffs that her corn was ‘full of darnel’. The man she makes this remark to is named Burgundy. Burgundy swears he’ll make her curse “the harvest of that corn.”
10) In King Lear there is also a character named Burgundy; he has come to England as a suitor to Cordelia but declines the match when she loses her dowry.
11) There is a character named Burgundy in only three plays: 1 Henry 6; Henry 5; and King Lear.
12) In each play with a character named Burgundy, there is also a mention of the plant darnel.
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Ophelia’s garland
(Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7, 166-173)
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 170
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 