(1)	Apemantus.	There's a Medlar for thee, eat it.
	Timon.	On what I hate I feed not.
	Apemantus.	Dost hate a Medlar?
	Timon.	Ay, though it looks like thee.
	Apemantus.	An thou hadst hated Meddlers sooner, thou shouldst have loved thyself better now.
Timon of Athens, act iv, sc. 3 (305).
(2)	Lucio.	They would have married me to the rotten Medlar.
Measure for Measure, act iv, sc. 3 (183).
(3)	Touchstone.	Truly the tree yields bad fruit.
	Rosalind.	I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a Medlar; then it will be the earliest fruit in the country, for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the Medlar.
As You Like It, act iii, sc. 2 (122).
(4)	Mercutio.	Now will he sit under a Medlar tree. And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call Medlars when they laugh alone.
Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 1 (80).[160:1]

The Medlar is an European tree, but not a native of England; it has, however, been so long introduced as to be now completely naturalized, and is admitted into the English flora. It is mentioned in the early vocabularies, and Chaucer gives it a very prominent place in his description of a beautiful garden—

The Flower and the Leaf (240).

And certainly a fine Medlar tree "ful of blossomes" is a handsome ornament on any lawn. There are few deciduous trees that make better lawn trees. There is nothing stiff about the growth even from its early youth; it forms a low, irregular, picturesque tree, excellent for shade, with very handsome white flowers, followed by the curious fruit; it will not, however, do well in the North of England or Scotland.

It does not seem to have been a favourite fruit with our forefathers. Bullein says "the fruite called the Medler is used for a medicine and not for meate;" and Shakespeare only used the common language of his time when he described the Medlar as only fit to be eaten when rotten. Chaucer said just the same—

The Reeves Tale.

And many others writers to the same effect. But, in fact, the Medlar when fit to be eaten is no more rotten than a ripe Peach, Pear, or Strawberry, or any other fruit which we do not eat till it has reached a certain stage of softness. There is a vast difference between a ripe and a rotten Medlar, though it would puzzle many of us to say when a fruit (not a Medlar only) is ripe, that is, fit to be eaten. These things are matters of taste and fashion, and it is rather surprising to find that we are accused, and by good judges, of eating Peaches when rotten rather than ripe. "The Japanese always eat their Peaches in an unripe state. In the 'Gartenflora' Dr. Regel says, in some remarks on Japanese fruit trees, that the Japanese regard a ripe Peach as rotten."

There are a few varieties of the Medlar, differing in the size and flavour of the fruits, which were also cultivated in Shakespeare's time.

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