an innocent love,
And sets a blister there."

And Ophelia (iii. 1) describes Hamlet as,

"The expectancy and rose of the fair state."

In days gone by the rose entered largely into the customs and
superstitions of most nations, and even nowadays there is an extensive
folk-lore associated with it.

It appears that, in Shakespeare's time, one of the fashions of the day
was the wearing of enormous roses on the shoes, of which full-length
portraits afford striking examples.[548] Hamlet (iii. 2) speaks of "two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes;" meaning, no doubt, rosettes of
ribbon in the shape of roses of Provins or Provence. Douce favors the
former, Warton the latter locality. In either case, it was a large
rose. The Provence, or damask rose, was probably the better known.
Gerarde, in his "Herbal," says that the damask rose is called by some
_Rosa Provincialis_.[549] Mr. Fairholt[550] quotes, from "Friar Bacon's
Prophecy" (1604), the following, in allusion to this fashion:

"When roses in the gardens grew,
And not in ribbons on a shoe:
Now ribbon roses take such place
That garden roses want their grace."

[548] Singer's "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. p. 227.

[549] "Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 179.

[550] "Costume in England," p. 238. At p. 579 the author gives
several instances of the extravagances to which this fashion led.

Again, in "King John" (i. 1), where the Bastard alludes to the
three-farthing silver pieces of Queen Elizabeth, which were extremely
thin, and had the profile of the sovereign, with a rose on the back of
her head, there doubtless is a fuller reference to the court fashion of
sticking roses in the ear:[551]

"my face so thin,
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,
Lest men should say, 'Look, where three-farthings goes.'"

[551] Some gallants had their ears bored, and wore their
mistresses' silken shoe-strings in them. See Singer's "Notes,"
vol. iv. p. 257.

Shakespeare also mentions the use of the rose in rose-cakes and
rose-water, the former in "Romeo and Juliet" (v. 1), where Romeo speaks
of "old cakes of roses," the latter in "Taming of the Shrew" (Induction,
1):

"Let one attend him with a silver basin
Full of rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers."

Referring to its historical lore, we may mention its famous connection
with the Wars of the Roses. In the fat