Alexander Dyce, A General Glossary to Shakespeare's Works

canker a caterpillar (“The larva I allude to [Lozotænia Rosana] . . . lives among the blossoms [of the rose], and prevents the possibility of their further development,” Patterson's Letters on the Nat. Hist. of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays, p. 34) : “in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells,” THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, i. 1. 43 ; “Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?” 1 HENRY VI., ii. 4. 68 ; “the canker death eats up that plant,” ROMEO AND JULIET, ii. 3. 30 ; “The canker galls the infants of the spring,” HAMLET, i. 3. 39 ; “This canker that eats up Love's tender spring,” VENUS AND ADONIS, 656 ; “And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud,” SONNETS, xxv. 4 ; “For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,” SONNETS, lxx. 7 ; “like a canker in the fragrant rose,” SONNETS, xcv. 2 ; “A vengeful canker eat him up to death,” SONNETS, xcix. 13 ; “to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,” A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM, ii. 2. 3 ; “cankers of a calm world,” 1 HENRY IV., iv. 2. 29.