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.
"The Mulberry tree was hung with blooming wreaths; The Mulberry tree stood centre of the dance; The Mulberry tree was hymn'd with dulcet strains; And from his touchwood trunk the Mulberry tree Supplied such relics as devotion holds Still sacred, and preserves with pious care."
[167:1] The Dictionarius of John de Garlande is published in Wright's "Vocabularies." His garden was probably in the neighbourhood of Paris, but he was a thorough Englishman, and there is little doubt that his description of a garden was drawn as much from his English as from his French experience.
[167:2] The authority may be in the "Promptorium Parvulorum:" "Mulberry, Morum (selsus)."
[167:3] "Moratum potionis genus, f. ex vino et moris dilutis confectæ."--_Glossarium Adelung._
[168:1] Cunningham's "Handbook of London," p. 346, with many quotations from the old dramatists.
[169:1] Some of these snuff-boxes were inscribed with the punning motto "Memento Mori."
You demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the greensour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime Is to make midnight Mushrooms.
I do wander everywhere. Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 1 (6).
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring: The expressure that it bears, green let it be, More fertile-fresh than all the field to see.