broom-groves THE TEMPEST, iv. 1. 66.
“The reading of the elder editions is ‘broom groves,’ which for what reason it is altered [to
‘brown groves’] I cannot conceive. Ceres was
certainly not the goddess of the woods; and those very broom groves seem to be expressly
hinted at, in the very words of Ceres which follow a little below, ‘my bosky
acres;’ which very properly express a broom-brake, as it is called, at least in the
western part of the island”
(HEATH)
.
“Broom in this place
signifies the Spartium scoparium, of which brooms are
frequently made. Near Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire it grows high enough to conceal the
tallest cattle as they pass through it; and in places where it is cultivated, still
higher: a circumstance that had escaped my notice, till I was told of it by Professor
Martyn”
(STEEVENS)
.
“In the old Scotch song of ‘My daddy is a canker'd
carle,’ the songstress places her lover in a broom-grove; ‘But let them say,
or let them do,
'Tis a’ ane to me;
For he's low down, he's in the broom,
Is waiting for me’ ” (MASON) . “Nares observes that as the broom, or genista, is a low shrub, which gives no shade, it has been doubted what is the exact meaning of broom-groves; but there are two kinds of broom, as mentioned in Lyte's edition of Dodoens, 1578, p. 663, ‘the one high and tawle, the other lowe and small,’ the first of which is stated to grow ‘commonly to the length of a long or tawle man,’ and Parkinson enumerates several other varieties. The Spartium scoparium, which grows to a great height, is probably the species alluded to by Shakespeare. There is a notice in the ancient romance of Guy of Warwick, preserved in the Auchinleck Ms. at Edinburgh, of three hundred Sarazens being concealed ‘in a brom field.’ See the Abbotsford Club edition, p. 292” (HALLIWELL) . “Hanmer changes this [‘broom groves’] to ‘brown groves,’ as does Mr. Collier's annotator; and a more unhappy alteration can hardly be conceived, since it at once destroys the point of the allusion: yellow, the colour of the broom, being supposed especially congenial to the lass-lorn and dismissed bachelor. Thus Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ Part iii. Sec. 2,—‘So long as we are wooers, and may kiss and coll at our pleasure, nothing is so sweet; we are in heaven, as we think; but when we are once tied, and have lost our liberty, marriage is an hell: give me my yellow hose again’” (STAUNTON) . “Is the word grove ever applied to shrubs by the Elizabethan writers? Hanmer's ‘brown groves’ has been before the public for more than a century, and has been vigorously assailed by men of eminent learning and ability, but no instance of this [that is, of grove applied to shrubs] has been produced, and therefore I conclude that none exists. The notion of disconsolate lovers betaking themselves to groves is common enough in poetry. Shakespeare himself has placed Romeo in a sycamore grove when Rosaline was cruel, and we may judge from this the sort of grove he would select for young gentlemen in the like case. Till it can be shown that a growth of broom may be called a grove, it seems idle to dispute about the height of the shrub. In Babington's Botany it is said to be 2 1/2 or 3 feet high, and this is certainly the usual height to which it grows on Hampstead Heath, though occasionally a plant may be found taller: I am told that in Italy it grows to the height of 6 or 7 feet; but that surely is no great matter.—The defences set up for the old reading [‘broom-groves’] appear to me singularly weak. ‘Ceres,’ says Heath, ‘was certainly not the goddess of the woods.’ Very true; and just as certainly she was not the goddess of ‘broom-brakes,’ or of ‘vineyards,’ or of ‘bosky acres,’ or ‘turfy mountains,’ or ‘unshrubb'd downs,’ or of ‘flowers,’ or of the ‘sea-marge sterile and rocky-hard;’ all which Heath has overlooked. It seems that in the present masque Ceres appears as the Goddess of the Earth, Δημήτηρ. That this was the original character of the Greek goddess is probable from the etymology of her name; but how Shakespeare came so to describe her, is a question for those who have studied the subject of his learning. He may have picked up a good deal of out-ofthe-way classical knowledge from Jonson [?]. I think, however, we are warranted rather in asking why woods are left out in this passage than why they are brought in.— Mason's quotation from the old Scotch song proves nothing as to broom-groves, for the song merely mentions broom. Mason accordingly is not warranted in saying that ‘the songstress places her lover in a broom-grove;’ yet Halliwell prints Mason's assertion, but omits the quotation with which he supports it; so that everybody who trusts to his sixty-guinea edition must necessarily believe that the phrase in question occurs in the old song. As to Halliwell's 300 Saracens hid in a broom field, the last word (field) is surely incompatible with groves. Besides, the same thing might happen, and indeed has happened, in a field of wheat. In The Morning Herald of 4 July 1861, there is an American account of 3000 rebels ‘concealed in a thick undergrowth and wheat fields.’ This, however, would not warrant such a phrase as wheat-groves.—I must confess that Staunton's note with the quotation from Burton's Anatomy appears to me far more unhappy than Hanmer's alteration. Shakespeare says nothing of the blossom of the broom; he only speaks of its shadow. Shakespeare could not have been guilty of so far-fetched an allusion, and such a perversion of language. I know of no passage in which the colour yellow is represented as ‘especially congenial to lass-lorn bachelors.’ Still, I am aware of several passages where yellow is mentioned as the colour of jealousy, but for the most part with reference to married people, not bachelors. I daresay, however, there are similar allusions to the jealousy of the unmarried also. Jokes about yellow hose, etc., are common enough. But in this passage from Burton the phrase refers neither to jealousy nor to unsuccessful love. Surely the context shows that here ‘give me my yellow hose again’ means ‘give me my bachelor's days again (when I wore yellow hose,—which were once in high fashion, and are still worn by the boys of Christ's Hospital,—and) when I was kissing and colling my intended, and not satiated with a wife’” (W. N. LETTSOM) .
'Tis a’ ane to me;
For he's low down, he's in the broom,
Is waiting for me’ ” (MASON) . “Nares observes that as the broom, or genista, is a low shrub, which gives no shade, it has been doubted what is the exact meaning of broom-groves; but there are two kinds of broom, as mentioned in Lyte's edition of Dodoens, 1578, p. 663, ‘the one high and tawle, the other lowe and small,’ the first of which is stated to grow ‘commonly to the length of a long or tawle man,’ and Parkinson enumerates several other varieties. The Spartium scoparium, which grows to a great height, is probably the species alluded to by Shakespeare. There is a notice in the ancient romance of Guy of Warwick, preserved in the Auchinleck Ms. at Edinburgh, of three hundred Sarazens being concealed ‘in a brom field.’ See the Abbotsford Club edition, p. 292” (HALLIWELL) . “Hanmer changes this [‘broom groves’] to ‘brown groves,’ as does Mr. Collier's annotator; and a more unhappy alteration can hardly be conceived, since it at once destroys the point of the allusion: yellow, the colour of the broom, being supposed especially congenial to the lass-lorn and dismissed bachelor. Thus Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ Part iii. Sec. 2,—‘So long as we are wooers, and may kiss and coll at our pleasure, nothing is so sweet; we are in heaven, as we think; but when we are once tied, and have lost our liberty, marriage is an hell: give me my yellow hose again’” (STAUNTON) . “Is the word grove ever applied to shrubs by the Elizabethan writers? Hanmer's ‘brown groves’ has been before the public for more than a century, and has been vigorously assailed by men of eminent learning and ability, but no instance of this [that is, of grove applied to shrubs] has been produced, and therefore I conclude that none exists. The notion of disconsolate lovers betaking themselves to groves is common enough in poetry. Shakespeare himself has placed Romeo in a sycamore grove when Rosaline was cruel, and we may judge from this the sort of grove he would select for young gentlemen in the like case. Till it can be shown that a growth of broom may be called a grove, it seems idle to dispute about the height of the shrub. In Babington's Botany it is said to be 2 1/2 or 3 feet high, and this is certainly the usual height to which it grows on Hampstead Heath, though occasionally a plant may be found taller: I am told that in Italy it grows to the height of 6 or 7 feet; but that surely is no great matter.—The defences set up for the old reading [‘broom-groves’] appear to me singularly weak. ‘Ceres,’ says Heath, ‘was certainly not the goddess of the woods.’ Very true; and just as certainly she was not the goddess of ‘broom-brakes,’ or of ‘vineyards,’ or of ‘bosky acres,’ or ‘turfy mountains,’ or ‘unshrubb'd downs,’ or of ‘flowers,’ or of the ‘sea-marge sterile and rocky-hard;’ all which Heath has overlooked. It seems that in the present masque Ceres appears as the Goddess of the Earth, Δημήτηρ. That this was the original character of the Greek goddess is probable from the etymology of her name; but how Shakespeare came so to describe her, is a question for those who have studied the subject of his learning. He may have picked up a good deal of out-ofthe-way classical knowledge from Jonson [?]. I think, however, we are warranted rather in asking why woods are left out in this passage than why they are brought in.— Mason's quotation from the old Scotch song proves nothing as to broom-groves, for the song merely mentions broom. Mason accordingly is not warranted in saying that ‘the songstress places her lover in a broom-grove;’ yet Halliwell prints Mason's assertion, but omits the quotation with which he supports it; so that everybody who trusts to his sixty-guinea edition must necessarily believe that the phrase in question occurs in the old song. As to Halliwell's 300 Saracens hid in a broom field, the last word (field) is surely incompatible with groves. Besides, the same thing might happen, and indeed has happened, in a field of wheat. In The Morning Herald of 4 July 1861, there is an American account of 3000 rebels ‘concealed in a thick undergrowth and wheat fields.’ This, however, would not warrant such a phrase as wheat-groves.—I must confess that Staunton's note with the quotation from Burton's Anatomy appears to me far more unhappy than Hanmer's alteration. Shakespeare says nothing of the blossom of the broom; he only speaks of its shadow. Shakespeare could not have been guilty of so far-fetched an allusion, and such a perversion of language. I know of no passage in which the colour yellow is represented as ‘especially congenial to lass-lorn bachelors.’ Still, I am aware of several passages where yellow is mentioned as the colour of jealousy, but for the most part with reference to married people, not bachelors. I daresay, however, there are similar allusions to the jealousy of the unmarried also. Jokes about yellow hose, etc., are common enough. But in this passage from Burton the phrase refers neither to jealousy nor to unsuccessful love. Surely the context shows that here ‘give me my yellow hose again’ means ‘give me my bachelor's days again (when I wore yellow hose,—which were once in high fashion, and are still worn by the boys of Christ's Hospital,—and) when I was kissing and colling my intended, and not satiated with a wife’” (W. N. LETTSOM) .
