Willows & Violets
20th November 2023
Seona Anderson
“In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage”
(LORENZO: Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1)
“Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now
That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?”
(DUCHESS: Richard II, Act 5, Scene 2)
Willows always signal trouble for someone when they appear in Shakespeare’s works. Ophelia is holding onto a Willow when she falls to her death in the stream. Desdemona is singing the Song of the Willow just before she is brutally murdered by her husband Othello. Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Princess Bona of France in Henry VI Part 3, Dido in Merchant of Venice, and the Jailor’s Daughter in Two Noble Kinsmen all use Willows to demonstrate that they have been rejected in love. Violets on the other hand almost always signify hope or new beginnings. This blog will explore the background to the cultural identities of these two plants which are metaphors for sorrow and hope.
The Willow occurs in several chapters of the Geneva Bible (1560 & 1599) but it is perhaps most famous for the reference in PSALMS 137 when the Israelites are held captive in Babylon: “By the rivers of Babel we sat, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.” This connection between Willows and weeping or sorrow was popularised through this Biblical quotation and it inspired Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern botany, to give the newly introduced Weeping Willow the scientific name Salix babylonica L. in the mid 18th century. However, many botanists now believe that the Willows of PSALMS 137 are a mistranslation and they refer to a type of Poplar instead (Kew Gardens; Musselman 2012).The Weeping Willow is native to Northern China and Korea but has become naturalised in many parts of the world. The Weeping Willow hybrids and varieties that we know today arrived in the mid 18th century and later, almost a century and a half after Shakespeare died.
Weeping Willows Along the Avon, Stratford
Willows also have a negative association in some parts of Greek Mythology. When Odysseus visits the Underworld in Book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey he crosses Persephone’s groves of tall Poplars and Willows. Niall Mac Coitir, in his book on Irish Tree Mythology gives a different view of the Willow as a noble tree associated with brightness and luck.
There are many species and hybrids of Willows in the UK today and some of the common would include Goat Willow (Salix caprea), White Willow (Salix alba), Grey Willow (Salix cinerea), Crack Willow (Salix fragilis) Osier Willow (Salix viminalis). Willows and Osiers would have been a common and valued resource in Shakespeare’s world used for baskets, fencing, building material, wood. They are still used for many of these purposes today.
Violets on the other hand are generally used in a positive sense by Shakespeare to express beauty, elegance, a hope for the future. Salisbury’s famously misquoted speech in King John (4:2) warns against gilding refined gold or painting the Lily but its also includes a reference to throwing unneeded perfume on the Violet. If Snowdrops signal the ending of winter then Violets celebrate the beginning of spring. Surviving the cold and hunger of winter was as achievement for many in Shakespeare’s world and the arrival of the Violet was a sign that easier times were about to start.
Shakespeare includes 17 references to Violets in his works. In Richard II the Violets refer to the men who will flourish in the new dawn of Henry Bolingbroke’s reign after the deposition of Richard. A bank of Violets set the scene for love in a Midsummer’s Night Dream and Twelfth Night. The Violet makes three appearances in Hamlet. First Laertes warns his sister Ophelia that Hamlet’s love for her may be beautiful and pure but it will be short-lived ‘a Violet in the youth of primy nature’. Then Ophelia claims that she cannot give out Violets along with the Pansies, Rosemary, Fennel and Rue because ‘they withered all when my father died’. If Violets symbolise hope then Ophelia is signalling that she has lost all hope for the future. Finally Laertes makes a plea at her graveside that ‘from her fair and unpolluted flesh may Violets spring!’. Is he asking for some sign of hope or appealing to the gods of metamorphosis that Ophelia’s good qualities and her untimely death should be recognised in the shape of newly sprung Violets?
Violets act as a reminder of the fragility and brevity of life, beauty and love: When I do count the clock that tells the time and see the brave day sunk in hideous night, when I behold the Violet past prime and sable curls all silvered o’er with white; (SONNET 12). Shakespeare chooses the Violet as the everyman plant that Henry V chooses to demonstrate that he is just a man as any other on the eve of battle as he goes disguised among his men on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt: “I think the King is but a man as I am. The Violet smells to him as it doth to me” (Henry V, 4:1)
Where does the Violet symbolism come from? There are no Violets in the texts of the Bible but the Violet came to be associated with the Virgin Mary. St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) described Mary as “the Violet of humility, the Lily of Chastity, the Rose of Charity” (Meagher 2007). Violets appear in Medieval and Renaissance art often in association with Mary. In 1323 the Troubadours of Toulouse instigated the Floral Games, resurrecting an old Roman festival, as a poetry competition. The Golden Violet (Violeta del Aur) was the highest honour and the original prize before the silver Eglantine and Marigold were added as additional prizes.
The Violet was used as garden plant, in garlands and bouquets, in flower salads, as sugar Violets, syrups and medicines. John Gerard, herbalist and gardener of the late 16th century cannot praise the Violet too much in his 1597 History of Plants, as well as explaining how violets were valued by the Greeks and Romans state: yea gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beauty, and most excellent grace, and the recreation of the mind which is taken hereby cannot be but very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest… for it would be an unseemly and filthy thing (as a certain wise man saith) for him that doth look upon and handle fair and beautiful things,, to have his mind not filthy and deformed”.
There are several species of wild Violets in the UK including Sweet Violet (Viola odorata) and Dog Violet (Viola riviniana) and Marsh Violet (Viola palustris) as well as numerous garden varieties. If you use the search term ‘Viola’ in the Plant Atlas 2020 website you can discover more about the UK’s Violets.
In an era of greenhouses and imported flowers the appearance of the first flowers of spring has a much lower impact but until the modern period the sight of a Violet would be a universal sign that life was beginning again after the trials of winter. We have fallen out of love with Violets but they were a highly symbolic and treasured part of Shakespeare’s World.
More Information
Dawson, J. C. 1921 Toulouse in the Renaissance; the Floral Games; University and Student Life: Etienne Dolet (1532-1534) View Publication in Archive.org
Homer, Odyssey Book 10
Kew Gardens: View Weeping Willow Information
Mac Coitir, N. 2003 Irish Trees: Myths, Legends and Folklore. The Collins Press
Meagher, J. 2007 Botanical Imagery in European Painting: Visit Met Museum Article
Musselman, J.L. 2012 A Dictionary of Bible Plants. Cambridge University Press
Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland: Plant Atlas 2020
Woodland Trust: A to Z of British Trees
