In Shakespeare's time several species were grown: the common, the winter, and the sweet. They were all favorite pot-herbs and were used in salads, if we may believe the _Clown_ in "All's Well That Ends Well":
LAFEN. 'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady; we may pick a thousand sallets ere we light on such another herb.
CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the Sweet Marjoram of the sallet, or, rather, the Herb of Grace.
LAFEN. They are not sallet-herbs, you knave, they are nose-herbs.
CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar; sir, I have not much skill in grass.[78]
"The common Sweet Marjoram (_Marierome_) is a low herb, little above a foot high, full of branches and small whitish, soft, roundish leaves, smelling very sweet. At the tops of the branches stand divers small, scaly heads, like unto knots, of a whitish green color, out of which come, here and there, small, white flowers, and afterward small reddish seed. Called _Mariorama_ in Latin, it is taken of most writers to be the Amaracus, or Sampsuchum, of Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Pliny."
According to the Greek myth a young man named Amarakos was employed in the household of the King of Cyprus. One day when he was carrying a vase of perfumes he dropped it, and he was so much humiliated by his carelessness that he fell and lost consciousness. The gods then changed him into the sweet herb _amarakos_, or _amaracus_, which is the Greek name for this plant. Rapin thought it owed its existence to Venus:
And tho' Sweet Marjoram will your garden paint With no gay colors, yet preserve the plant, Whose fragrance will invite your kind regard When her known virtues have her worth declared: On Simois' shore fair Venus raised the plant, Which from the Goddess' touch derived her scent.
THYME (_Thymus Serpyllum_). Thyme has always been appreciated by those who delight in aromatic perfume. It was one of those plants that Lord Bacon said were so delicious when trodden upon and crushed. Thyme was the symbol for sweetness in Elizabethan days.
was a favorite expression. "Sweet thyme true" occurs in connection with roses, "maiden pinks," and daisies in the song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen."[79]
Fairies were thought to be particularly fond of thyme, and that is one reason why Shakespeare covered the bank where _Titania_ was wont to sleep with wild thyme. The other reason was that he chose the sweetest flowers for perfume for the canopy and couch of the Fairy Queen: musk-roses, eglantine, honeysuckle, violets, and wild thyme mingling the most delicious of scents. The word comes from the Greek and Latin _thymum_. Thyme covered Mount Hymettus and gave to the honey produced there a particularly delicious aromatic flavor. The "honey of Mount Hymettus" became a proverb. Hybla in Sicily was no less famed for its thyme, and, consequently, its honey. Thyme is especially a "bee-plant"; and those who would see their gardens full of bees would do well to plant thyme with lavish hand. Ladies used to embroider a bee hovering over a sprig of thyme on the scarves they gave to their lovers--a symbol of action and honor. Thyme, too, was supposed to renew the spirits of man and beast and it was deemed a powerful antidote against melancholy.
