The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 71

I can find no guide to the identification of the Poperin Pear, beyond Parkinson's description: "The summer Popperin and the winter Popperin, both of them very good, firm, dry Pears, somewhat spotted and brownish on the outside. The green Popperin is a winter fruit of equal goodnesse with the former." It was probably a Flemish Pear, and may have been introduced by the antiquary Leland, who was made Rector of Popering by Henry VIII. The place is further known to us as mentioned by Chaucer--

"A knyght was fair and gent In batail and in tornament, His name was Sir Thopas.

Alone he was in fer contre, In Flaundres, all beyonde the se, At Popering in the place."

As a garden tree the Pear is not only to be grown for its fruit, but as a most ornamental tree. Though the individual flowers are not, perhaps, so handsome as the Apple blossoms, yet the growth of the tree is far more elegant; and an old Pear tree, with its curiously roughened bark, its upright, tall, pyramidal shape, and its sheet of snow-white blossoms, is a lovely ornament in the old gardens and lawns of many of our country houses. It is by some considered a British tree, but it is probably only a naturalized foreigner, originally introduced by the Romans.

FOOTNOTES:

[200:1] The Warden was sometimes spoken of as different from Pears. Sir Hugh Platt speaks of "Wardens _or_ Pears."

PEAS.

(1) _Iris._

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60).

(2) _Carrier._

Peas and Beans are as dank here as a dog.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 1 (9).

(_See_ BEANS.)

(3) _Biron._

This fellow picks up wit, as pigeons Pease.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (315).

(4) _Bottom._

I had rather have a handful or two of dried Peas.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (41).

(5) _Fool._

That a shealed Peascod?

_King Lear_, act i, sc. 4 (219).

(6) _Touchstone._

I remember the wooing of a Peascod instead of her.

_As You Like It_, act ii, sc. 4 (51).

(7) _Malvolio._

Not yet old enough to be a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a Squash is before 'tis a Peascod, or a Codling when 'tis almost an Apple.

_Twelfth Night_, act i, sc. 5 (165).

(8) _Hostess._

Well, fare thee well! I have known thee these twenty-nine years come Peascod time.

_2nd Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (412).

(9) _Leontes._

How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This Squash, this gentleman.

_Winter's Tale_, act i, sc. 2 (159).

(10)

_Peascod, Pease-Blossom, and Squash_--Dramatis personae in _Midsummer Night's Dream_.

There is no need to say much of Peas, but it may be worth a note in pa.s.sing that in old English we seldom meet with the word Pea. Peas or Pease (the Anglicised form of Pisum) is the singular, of which the plural is Peason. "Pisum is called in Englishe a Pease;" says Turner--

"Alle that for me thei doo pray, Helpeth me not to the uttermost day The value of a Pese."

_The Child of Bristowe_, p. 570.

And the word was so used in and after Shakespeare's time, as by Ben Jonson--

"A pill as small as a pease."--_Magnetic Lady._

The Squash is the young Pea, before the Peas are formed in it, and the Peascod is the ripe sh.e.l.l of the Pea before it is sh.e.l.led.[202:1] The garden Pea (_Pisum sativum_) is the cultivated form of a plant found in the South of Europe, but very much altered by cultivation. It was probably not introduced into England as a garden vegetable long before Shakespeare's time. It is not mentioned in the old lists of plants before the sixteenth century, and Fuller tells us that in Queen Elizabeth's time they were brought from Holland, and were "fit dainties for ladies, they came so far and cost so dear."

The beautiful ornamental Peas (Sweet Peas, Everlasting Peas, &c.) are of different family (Lathyrus, not Pisum), but very closely allied. There is a curious amount of folklore connected with Peas, and in every case the Peas and Peascods are connected with wooing the la.s.ses. This explains Touchstone's speech (No. 6). Brand gives several instances of this, from which one stanza from Browne's "Pastorals" may be quoted--