hire; but I do not know this for certain.[389:1]

_Two Noble Kinsmen._ Here the season is distinctly stated for us by the
poet. The scene is laid in May, and the flowers named are all in
accordance--daffodils, daisies, marigolds, oxlips, primrose, roses, and
thyme.

I cannot claim any great literary results from this inquiry into the
seasons of Shakespeare as indicated by the flowers named; on the
contrary, I must confess that the results are exceedingly small--I might
almost say, none at all--still I do not regret the time and trouble that
the inquiry has demanded of me. In every literary inquiry the value of
the research is not to be measured by the visible results. It is
something even to find out that there are no results, and so save
trouble to future inquirers. But in this case the research has not been
altogether in vain. Every addition, however small, to the critical study
of our great Poet has its value; and to myself, as a student of the
Natural History of Shakespeare, the inquiry has been a very pleasant
one, because it has confirmed my previous opinion, that even in such
common matters as the names of the most familiar every-day plants he
does not write in a careless hap-hazard way, naming just the plant that
comes uppermost in his thoughts, but that they are all named in the most
careful and correct manner, exactly fitting into the scenes in which
they are placed, and so giving to each passage a brightness and a
reality which would be entirely wanting if the plants were set down in
the ignorance of guess-work. Shakespeare knew the plants well; and
though his knowledge is never paraded, by its very thoroughness it
cannot be hid.

FOOTNOTES:

[386:1] If "the rite of May" (act iv, sc. 1) is to be strictly limited
to May-Day, the title of a "_Midsummer_ Night's Dream" does not apply.
The difficulty can only be met by supposing the scene to be laid at any
night in May, even in the last night, which would coincide with our 12th
of June.

[388:1] "The Alexandrine figs are of the black kind having a white rift
or Chanifre, and are surnamed Delicate. . . . Certain figs there be,
which are both early and also lateward; . . . . they are ripe first in
harvest, and afterwards in time of vintage; . . . . also some there be
which beare thrice a year" (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ b. xv., c. 18, P.
Holland's translation, 1601).

[389:1] The objection to fixing the date of the play in spring is that
Cordelia bids search to