| (1) | Clown. | I must have Saffron to colour the Warden pies—Mace—Dates? none; that's out of my note. | | Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 3 (48). | | | (2) | Nurse. | They call for Dates and Quinces in the pastry. | | Romeo and Juliet, act iv, sc. 4 (2). | | | (3) | Parolles. | Your Date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek. | | All's Well that Ends Well, act i, sc. 1 (172). | | | (4) | Pandarus. | Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man? | | Cressida. | Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with no Date in the pye; for then the man's date's out. | | Troilus and Cressida, act i, sc. 2 (274). | The Date is the well-known fruit of the Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera), the most northern of the Palms. The Date Palm grows over the whole of Southern Europe, North Africa, and South-eastern Asia; but it is not probable that Shakespeare ever saw the tree, though Neckam speaks of it in the twelfth century, and Lyte describes it, and Gerard made many efforts to grow it; he tried to grow plants from the seed, "the which I have planted many times in my garden, and have grown to the height of three foot, but the first frost hath nipped them in such sort that they perished, notwithstanding mine industrie by covering them, or what else I could do for their succour." The fruit, however, was imported into England in very early times, and was called by the Anglo-Saxons Finger-Apples, a curious name, but easily explained as the translation of the Greek name for the fruit, da?t???? which was also the origin of the word date, of which the olden form was dactylle.[80:1]
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