THE ROSE (Rosa). Shakespeare speaks of the rose more frequently than any other flower. Sixty references to the rose are scattered through his works. Sometimes he talks of the rose itself and sometimes he uses the word to make a striking comparison, or analogy. With magical touch he gives us the bold picture of a

Red rose on triumphant briar,

then he brings before us a delicious whiff of the

PerfumÈd tincture of the roses,

or the luscious fragrance of

Morning roses newly washed with dew.

With equal delicacy of perception he tells us

Shakespeare's special roses are the Red, the White, the Musk, the Eglantine (sweetbrier), the ProvenÇal, or Provins, the Damask, the Canker, and the Variegated.

THE RED ROSE (Rose Anglica rubra), the English red, is thus described by Parkinson:

"The Red Rose, which I call English because this rose is more frequent and used in England than in other places, never groweth so high as the Damask Rose-bush, but more usually abideth low and shooteth forth many branches from the Rose-bush (and is but seldom suffered to grow up as the Damask Rose into standards) with a green bark thinner set with prickles and longer and greener leaves on the upper side than in the white, yet with an eye of white upon them, five likewise most usually set upon a stalk and grayish, or whitish, underneath. The Roses, or flowers, do very much vary according to their site and abiding, for some are of an orient red, or deep crimson, color and very double (although never so double as the White), which, when it is full blown, hath the largest leaves of any other Rose; some of them again are paler, tending somewhat to a Damask; and some are of so pale a red as that it is rather of the color of a Canker Rose, yet all for the most part with larger leaves than the Damask, and with many more yellow threads in the middle. The scent hereof is much better than in the White, but not comparable to the excellency of the Damask Rose, yet this Rose, being well dried and well kept, will hold both color and scent longer than the Damask."

THE WHITE ROSE (Rosa Anglica alba).

"The White Rose is of two kinds," says Parkinson, "the one more thick and double than the other. The one riseth up in some shadowy places unto eight or ten foot high, with a stock of great bigness for a rose. The other growing seldom higher than a Damask Rose. Both these Roses have somewhat smaller and whiter green leaves than in many other Roses, five most usually set on a stock and more white underneath, as also a whiter green bark, armed with sharp thorns, or prickles. The flowers in the one are whitish with an eye, or shew, of a blush, especially towards the ground, or bottom, of the flower, very thick, double and close set together; and, for the most part, not opening itself so largely and fully as either the Red, or Damask Rose. The other more white, less thick and double and opening itself more, and some so little double (as but of two or three rows) that they might be held to be single, yet all of little or no smell at all."

From this Rosa alba, Pliny says, the isle of Albion derived its name—a happy thought when we remember that the rose is still the national emblem of England.

MUSK-ROSE (Rosa moschata). Musk-roses and eglantine mingled with honeysuckle formed the canopy beneath which Titania slumbered on a bank made soft and lovely with wild thyme, oxlips and nodding violets. And in the "coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers" that the dainty little fairy queen placed upon the hairy temples of Bottom the Weaver, musk-roses were conspicuous; and the sweetness of these was intensified by "the round and Orient pearls of dew" that swelled upon the petals, as the "pretty flowerets bewailed their own disgrace."

It is this delicious rose which Keats, when listening to the nightingale, sensed rather than visualized in the twilight dimness:

The musk-rose was adored by the Elizabethans. Lord Bacon considered its scent to come next to that of the violet, and before all other flowers.

"You remember the great bush at the corner of the south wall just by the Blue Drawing-room window?" writes Mrs. Gaskell in "My Lady Ludlow." "That is the old musk-rose, Shakespeare's musk-rose, which is dying out through the kingdom now. The scent is unlike the scent of any other rose, or of any other flower."

The musk-rose is a native of North Africa, Spain, and India (Nepal). Hakluyt in 1582 gave the date of its introduction into England. "The turkey-cocks and hens," he says, "were brought in about fifty years past; the Artichoke in the time of Henry the Eighth; and of later times was procured out of Italy the Musk Rose plant and the Plum called Perdigwena."

Turning now to Parkinson and opening his big volume at the page "Rosa Moschata, simple and multiplex," we read:

"The Musk Rose, both single and double, rises up oftentimes to a very great height that it overgroweth any arbor in a Garden, or being set by a house side to be ten or twelve foot high, or more, but especially the single kind with many green far spread branches armed with a few sharp great thorns, as the wilder sorts of Roses are, whereof these are accounted to be kinds, having small dark green leaves on them, not much bigger than the leaves of Eglantines. The Flowers come forth at the tops of the branches, many together as it were in an umbel, or tuft, which, for the most part, do flower all at a time, or not long one after another, every one standing on a pretty long stalk and are of a pale whitish, or cream color, both the single and the double, the single being small flowers consisting of five leaves with many yellow threads in the middle; and the double bearing more double flowers, as if they were once or twice more double than the single, with yellow thrums also in the middle, both of them of a very sweet and pleasing smell, resembling musk. Some there be that have avouched that the chief scent of these Roses consisteth not in the leaves but in the threads of the Flowers."

The color of the musk-rose is white, slightly tinged with pink.

EGLANTINE; ALSO SWEETBRIER (Rosa eglanteria). This is a conspicuous adornment of Titania's bower, and is as remarkable for its beauty as for its scent. The pink flowers with their golden threads in the center are familiar to every one.

"The Sweet Briar, or Eglantine," Parkinson writes, "is not only planted in Gardens for the sweetness of its leaves, but growing wild in many woods and hedges, hath exceeding long green shoots armed with the cruellest sharp and strong thorns and thicker set than is in any Rose, either Wild or tame. The leaves are smaller than in most of those that are nourished up in Gardens, seven or nine, most usually set together on a rib, or stalk, very green and sweeter in smell about the leaves of any other kind of Rose. The flowers are small, single, blush Roses."

PROVENÇAL, OR PROVINS (Centifolia). This old-fashioned cabbage-rose of globular flowers, massive foliage, hard knob of leaves in the center, and sweet perfume is affectionately known as the "Hundred Leaf," or rose À cent feuilles. Parkinson gives two varieties: the incarnate, or flesh-color; and the red.

In our country the light pink, or incarnate, is the more familiar. What associations does it not conjure up? To many of us Dean Hole's words make a touching appeal:

"The blushing, fresh, fragrant Provence! It was to many of us the Rose of our childhood and its delicious perfume passes through the outer sense into our hearts gladdening them with bright and happy dreams, saddening them with love and child awakenings. It brings more to us than the fairness and sweet smell of a Rose. We passed in our play to gaze on it with the touch of a vanished hand in ours, with a father's blessing on our heads and a mother's prayer that we might never lose our love of the beautiful. Happy they who return, or regain, that love."

THE DAMASK ROSE (Rosa damascena) is a native of Syria, whence it was brought to Europe about 1270 by Thibault IV, Comte de Brie, returning from the Holy Land. We know exactly when it was introduced into England because Hakluyt, writing in 1582, says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not here before, as the Damask Rose by Doctor Liniker, King Henry the Seventh and King Henry the Eighth's physician."

"Gloves as sweet as Damask Roses" Autolycus carries in his peddler's pack for "lads to give their dears," along with masks for their faces, perfume, necklace-amber, pins, quoifs, and "lawn as white as driven snow."[50]

Parkinson informs us:

"The Damask Rose-bush is more usually nourished up to a competent height to stand alone (which we call Standards), than any other Rose. The bark, both of the stock and branches, is not fully so green as the Red or White Rose. The leaves are green with an eye of white upon them. The flowers are of a fine deep blush color, as all know, with some pale yellow threads in the middle, and are not so thick and double as the White, not being blown with so large and great leaves as the Red, but of the most excellent sweet pleasant scent, far surpassing all other Roses or Flowers, being neither heady, nor too strong, nor stuffing or unpleasant sweet, as many other flowers.

"The Rose is of exceeding great use with us, for the Damask Rose (besides the superexcellent sweet water it yieldeth, being distilled, or the perfume of its leaves, being dried, serving to fill sweet bags) serveth to cause solubleness of the body, made into a syrup, or preserved with sugar, moist or candied." The name is obviously from Damascus.

CANKER (Rosa canina). This is the wild dog-rose common to many countries. The name dog-rose was given to it by the Romans, because the root was said to cure the bite of a mad dog. Pliny says the remedy was discovered in a dream by the mother of a soldier who had been bitten by a mad dog. Don Juan's remark in "Much Ado About Nothing."[51]

refers, of course, to the canker-rose. According to legend, the Crown of Thorns was made from the briers of this variety of rose.

VARIEGATED ROSE (Rosa versicolor) of Shakespeare's plays is the curious bush which produces at the same time red roses, white roses, and roses of red mottled with white and of white mottled with red. The growth of the tree is stiff and erect and the flowers have a sweet scent. The rose is often called the "York and Lancaster." Parkinson says:

"This Rose in the form and order of the growing is nearest unto the ordinary Damask Rose both for stem, branch, leaf and flower, the difference consisting in this—that the flower (being of the same largeness and doubleness as the Damask Rose) hath the one half of it sometimes of a pale whitish color and the other half of a paler damask color than the ordinary. This happeneth so many times, and sometimes also the flower hath divers stripes and marks on it, one leaf white, or striped with white, and the other half blush, or striped with blush, sometimes all striped, or spotted over, and at other times little or no stripes, or marks, at all, as Nature listeth to play with varieties in this as in other flowers. Yet this I have observed, that the longer it abideth blown open to the sun, the paler and the fewer stripes, marks, or spots will be seen in it. The smell is of a weak Damask Rose scent."

This rose recalls the old song of a "Lover to His Lancastrian Mistress," on handing her a white rose:

In his play of "King Henry VI," which passes during the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare introduces the noted scene in the Temple Garden, London, where the emblem of the Yorkists (a white rose) and that of the Lancastrians (a red rose) is chosen. Richard Plantagenet plucks a white rose and the Earl of Somerset a red rose from rose-bushes that are still growing and blooming in the same spot, as they did when Shakespeare imagined the scene in "King Henry VI."[52]

In Shakespeare's day the rose was enormously cultivated. In the gardens of Ely Place, the home of Queen Elizabeth's dashing lord chancellor, twenty bushels of roses were gathered annually—a good deal for the time.

"About thirty species of roses," writes Edmund Gosse, "were known to the Elizabethan gardeners, and most of them did particularly well in London until in the reign of James I, when the increasing smoke of coal-fires exterminated the most lovely and the most delicate species, the double yellow rose. Things grew rapidly worse in this respect, until Parkinson in despair, cried out: 'Neither herb, nor tree, will prosper since the use of sea-coal.' Up to that time in London, and afterwards in country-places, the rose preserved its vogue. It was not usually grown for pleasure, since the petals had a great commercial value; there was a brisk trade in dried roses and a precious sweet water was distilled from the damask rose. The red varieties of the rose were considered the best medicinally, and they produced that rose syrup which was so widely used both as a cordial and as an aperient. The fashion for keeping potpourri in dwelling-rooms became so prevalent that the native gardens could not supply enough, and dried yellow roses became a recognized import from Constantinople. We must think of the parlors of the ladies who saw Shakespeare's plays performed for the first time as all redolent with the perfume of dried, spiced and powdered rose-leaves." In "Sonnet LIV" Shakespeare says:

For twenty-seven centuries—and more—the rose has been considered queen of flowers. Her perfume, her color, her elegance, and her mystic fascination have won all hearts. Shakespeare says: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In one sense that is true; but we would not be willing to try another title, for the very word rose is a beautiful one and conjures up a particular and very special vision of sweetness and beauty.

Thousands and thousands of poems have been written in praise of this flower, ever since Sappho sang to her lyre the words "Ho! the rose! Ho! the rose!"

Sir Henry Wotton wrote:

And Hood sang:

And Shelley:

Shelley's "fold after fold" reminds us that Ruskin points out that one of the rose's beauties is that her petals make shadows over and over again of their own loveliness.

Dr. Forbes Watson has, perhaps, been the most successful of all writers in putting into words the reasons why the rose has such power over mankind:

"The flower has something almost human about it—warm, breathing, soft as the fairest cheek; of white, no longer snowy like the narcissus, but flushed with hues of animating pink; either flower, white or red, being alike symbolical of glowing, youthful passion."

In the East the rose gardens have been famed for centuries. The flower is said to burst into bloom at the voice of the nightingale. The poet Jami says: "You may place a handful of fragrant herbs of flowers before the nightingale, yet he wishes not in his constant heart for more than the sweet breath of his beloved rose." It is said that an Arabian doctor discovered the recipe for rose-water in the Tenth Century; but the perfume may be older than that. The Rosa centifolia is the blossom used. The Indians and Persians have known how to make their attar of rose for centuries.

A large volume would be required to chronicle the romance of the rose, for it is the flower of love, beauty, and poetry. It is dedicated to Venus, and Venus is frequently represented as wearing a crown of roses. Her son, Eros or Cupid, is also wreathed and garlanded with roses. Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, god of silence—hence the rose is also the symbol of silence. "Under the rose," a saying that expresses silence and secrecy, is derived from this legend. A siren holding a rose stands among the sculptured ruins of PÆstum. Roses and myrtle adorned the brides of Greece and Rome. The profusion of roses used for decorations at feasts astounds us even to-day. No epicure was satisfied with the cup of Falernian wine unless it were perfumed with roses; and the Spartan soldiers at the Battle of Cirrha actually refused wine because it was not perfumed with roses. This makes us wonder if those Spartan mothers, of whom we hear so much, were really as severe as they are reputed to have been. Red roses were dedicated to Jupiter; damask roses to Venus; and white roses to Diana or the moon. The rose was given to the Virgin Mary as her particular flower; and many Italian painters as well as Flemish, Spanish, and German, have painted the Madonna of the Rose, the Madonna of the Rose-hedge, the Madonna of the Rose-bush, and the Madonna of the Rose-garden. The rosary, introduced by St. Dominick in commemoration of his having been shown a Chaplet of roses by the Virgin, originally consisted of rose-leaves pressed into balls.