Of all seasons, this was the most enjoyable to Shakespeare--because of his passion for flowers. He delighted to make long luscious lists of flowers--their very names were a pleasure to him, each fraught with its own special significance. He loved to write of
Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath: pale primroses.... The crown-imperial,--lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one.
Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royal in their scent alone, But in their hue. Maiden pinks of odour faint, Daisies smell-less yet most quaint, And sweet thyme true;
"Carnations and streaked gillyflowers," and all the lovely company of the garden, were a joy to him; and equally so the wild flowers in woodlands where "the wild thyme grows, And oxlips and the nodding violet blows," over which the south wind breathes softly, "stealing and giving odour." Beneath the tangled woodbines and musk-roses, the poet could linger in fantasy, if not in fact,--in dream, if not in deed. A passionate enjoyment of wild nature distinguished him pre-eminently above all his town-bred compeers. Trees and birds and forest brooks, but flowers especially, claimed an equal place with music in his affections. Beauty of sight and sound appealed, with magic power, to the man on whom the robuster joys failed to make any permanent mark. For towards all the salient characteristics of the Elizabethan age,--the volcanic vigour, the incandescent longing for adventure, the magnificent dare-devilry of seamanship, the fierce and splendid valour, inciting men to desperate deeds,--William Shakespeare was strangely impassive and unimpressionable. The wave of Elizabethan ardour surged past, and left him not even sprinkled by its spray. He was quite content to go on clothing with new flesh--glowing and Giorgione-like--the antique bones of old romances; to infuse new life into forgotten mediæval episodes, crudely treated by his predecessors, the men who supplied stock plays for travelling companies. He preferred some ardent love-scene in the rich, dim gardens of Verona to all the opulent possibilities of the New World: some pageantry in Venice or in Athens to any present splendour of the Elizabethan court. He secretly revelled, with conscious and justifiable pride, in pouring forth imperial passages of words, reverberant with rolling sound; but frequently, for the sheer pleasure of musical effect, as it would seem, he introduced those exquisite lyrics,--bird-like in their careless spontaneity, flower-like in their grace and daintiness,--which float like flakes of thistledown above his plays. These songs say all that need be said: they condense into a few swift words the essential spirit of a whole drama. So in _Othello_: