William Guifoyle (1840-1912) was an English botanist who was part of the scientific expedition of the HMS Challenger who in 1868 traveled around the Pacific Ocean. Five years later he settled in Melbourne where he went on to direct the Royal Botanical Garden.
It was precisely during this stage that he began to publish a total of twenty-five articles in which, in alphabetical order -from aconite to yew- and on a monthly basis, he compiled all the plants that appear in the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). An interesting work, as well as useful and relevant, which highlights the interest of the English bard in botany.
gardener and writer
‘The merchant of Venice‘, ‘The dream of a nigth of summer‘ o ‘Romeo and Juliet‘ are just three examples of works in which William Shakespeare bequeathed us botanical spaces between his lines. There we can find poppies, mandrakes, daisies, violets, roses… Thus, for example, in ‘Romeo y Julieta’ it is the priest, Fray Lorenzo, who prepares the concoction and points out how medicine and poison sleep hidden in the flower , just as it happens in the human soul; in Macbeth the witches loudly announce the ingredients of their spell, which includes a “plucked night hemlock root».
Titania, the queen of the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has four elves whose names are reminiscent of home remedies and one of them has a close relationship with botany: Mustard Seed, Moth, Spider Web and Pea Flower.
Shakespeare’s botanical knowledge came from herbariums that contained detailed information on medicinal plants that were collected in the classic works of some of the great figures of Medicine, such as Hippocrates, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen or Avicenna. And it is that the terrible epidemics that devastated the Elizabethan era and the venereal diseases, apparently incurable, forced at that time to have a wide knowledge of medicinal plants.
shakespeare gardens
To honor his colossal botanical work, some cities, including New York, Paris or Stratford-upon-Avon, have created themed green spaces with plants that appear in the works of the English poet and which are generically known as “gardens of Shakespeare.”
The plant species are usually identified by means of informative plates in which a brief fragment of the work in which they appear immortalized is also exhibited. Usually these gardens are not isolated but are part of larger ones. Possibly the Shakespeare garden that is located inside Central Park is the most visited in the world.
The New York garden has an area of approximately one and a half hectares, and inside, along winding paths, everything from pansies and rosemary -which are mentioned in Hamlet- to thistles -cited in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’- are grown. . In the heart of Manhattan there is even a white mulberry tree, which according to legend comes from a graft from a tree planted in 1602 by the English writer.
Not far from there is the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which has also housed a Shakespeare garden since 1925. More than eighty plants that appear in Shakespearean poems and plays are grown here, delighting lovers of English literature and botany.