(1)	Titania.	Feed him with Apricocks and Dewberries, With purple Grapes, green Figs, and Mulberries.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii, sc. 1 (169).
(2)	Volumnia.	Thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest Mulberry That will not bear the handling.
Coriolanus, act iii, sc. 2 (78).
(3)	Prologue.	Thisby tarrying in Mulberry shade.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act v, sc. 1 (149).
(4)	Wooer.	Palamon is gone Is gone to the wood to gather Mulberries.
Two Noble Kinsmen, act iv, sc. 1 (87).
(5)		The birds would bring him Mulberries and ripe-red Cherries.
Venus and Adonis (1103). (See Cherries.)

We do not know when the Mulberry, which is an Eastern tree, was introduced into England, but probably very early. We find in Archbishop Ælfric's "Vocabulary," "morus vel rubus, mor-beam," but it is doubtful whether that applies to the Mulberry or Blackberry, as in the same catalogue Blackberries are mentioned as "flavi vel mori, blace-berian." There is no doubt that Morum was a Blackberry as well as a Mulberry in classical times. Our Mulberry is probably the fruit mentioned by Horace—

Sat. ii, 4, 24.

And it certainly is the fruit mentioned by Ovid—

Metam., i, 105.

In the Dictionarius of John de Garlande (thirteenth century)[167:1] we find, "Hec sunt nomina silvestrium arborum, qui sunt in luco magistri Johannis; quercus cum fago, pinus cum lauro, celsus gerens celsa;" and Mr. Wright translates "celsa" by "Mulberries," without, however, giving his authority for this translation.[167:2] But whenever introduced, it had been long established in England in Shakespeare's time.

It must have been a common tree even in Anglo-Saxon times, for the favourite drink, Morat, was a compound of honey flavoured with Mulberries (Turner's "Anglo-Saxons").[167:3] Spenser spoke of it—

Elegy, 18.

Gerard describes it as "high and full of boughes," and growing in sundry gardens in England, and he grew in his own London garden both the Black and the White Mulberry. Lyte also, before Gerard, describes it and says: "It is called in the fayning of Poetes the wisest of all other trees, for this tree only among all others bringeth forth his leaves after the cold frostes be past;" and the Mulberry Garden, often mentioned by the old dramatists, "occupied the site of the present Buckingham Palace and Gardens, and derived its name from a garden of Mulberry trees planted by King James I. in 1609, in which year 935l. was expended by the king in the planting of Mulberry trees near the Palace of Westminster."[168:1]

As an ornamental tree for any garden, the Mulberry needs no recommendation, being equally handsome in shape, in foliage, and in fruit. It is a much prized ornament in all old gardens, so that it has been well said that an old Mulberry tree on the lawn is a patent of nobility to any garden; and it is most easy of cultivation; it will bear removal when of a considerable size, and so easily can it be propagated from cuttings that a story is told of Mr. Payne Knight that he cut large branches from a Mulberry tree to make standards for his clothes-lines, and that each standard took root, and became a flourishing Mulberry tree.

Though most of us only know of the common White or Black Mulberry, yet, where it is grown for silk culture (as it is now proposed to grow it in England, with a promised profit of from £70 to £100 per acre for the silk, and an additional profit of from £100 to £500 per acre from the grain (eggs)!!), great attention is paid to the different varieties; so that M. de Quatrefuges briefly describes six kinds cultivated in one valley in France, and Royle remarks, "so many varieties have been produced by cultivation that it is difficult to ascertain whether they all belong to one species; they are," as he adds, "nearly as numerous as those of the silkworm" (Darwin).

We have good proof of Shakespeare's admiration of the Mulberry in the celebrated Shakespeare Mulberry growing in his garden at New Place at Stratford-on-Avon. "That Shakespeare planted this tree is as well authenticated as anything of that nature can be, ... and till this was planted there was no Mulberry tree in the neighbourhood. The tree was celebrated in many a poem, one especially by Dibdin, but about 1752, the then owner of New Place, the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, bought and pulled down the house, and wishing, as it should seem, to be 'damned to everlasting fame,' he had some time before cut down Shakespeare's celebrated Mulberry tree, to save himself the trouble of showing it to those whose admiration of our great poet led them to visit the poetick ground on which it stood."—Malone. The pieces were made into many snuff-boxes[169:1] and other mementoes of the tree.

Cowper, Task, book vi.

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