"he was met even now As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn."
_Cypress._ From the earliest times the cypress has had a mournful history, being associated with funerals and churchyards, and as such is styled by Spenser "cypress funereal."
In Quarles's "Argalus and Parthenia" (1726, bk. iii.) a knight is introduced, whose
"horse was black as jet, His furniture was round about beset With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree."
Formerly coffins were frequently made of cypress wood, a practice to which Shakespeare probably alludes in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 4), where the Clown says: "In sad cypress let me be laid." Some, however, prefer[487] understanding cypress to mean "a shroud of cyprus or cypress"--a fine, transparent stuff, similar to crape, either white or black, but more commonly the latter.[488] Douce[489] thinks that the expression "laid" seems more applicable to a coffin than to a shroud, and also adds that the shroud is afterwards expressly mentioned by itself.
"Lawn as white as driven snow; Cyprus black as e'er was crow."
Its transparency is alluded to in "Twelfth Night," iii. 1:
[488] See Dyce's "Glossary," 1872, p. 113.
[489] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 56. See Mr. Gough's "Introduction to Sepulchral Monuments," p. lxvi.; also Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 221.
_Daffodil._ The daffodil of Shakespeare is the wild daffodil which grows so abundantly in many parts of England. Perdita, in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4), mentions a little piece of weather-lore, and tells us how
"daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty."
And Autolycus, in the same play (iv. 3), sings thus:
"When daffodils begin to peer,-- With, heigh! the doxy over the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year."
_Darnel._ This plant, like the cockle, was used in Shakespeare's day to denote any hurtful weed. Newton,[490] in his "Herbal to the Bible," says that "under the name of cockle and darnel is comprehended all vicious, noisome, and unprofitable graine, encombring and hindering good corne." Thus Cordelia, in "King Lear" (iv. 4), says: