Shakespeare's Plants and Gardens: A Dictionary

Scholars looking for the symbolic significance of unfamiliar plants will find much of use here, as demonstrated by the entry on the medlar, a now uncommon fruit with both sexual connotations and punning potential. The volume is almost as interesting for its wide-ranging introduction and survey of botanically related criticism as for the entries…It will be a good addition for comprehensive Shakespeare collections or libraries supporting intensive study of the early modern period. Summing Up: Recommended. Comprehensive early modern collections supporting graduate students and researchers/faculty. -- S. Magedanz, California State University San Bernardino * CHOICE *
This latest work in the Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries series offers a fascinating and comprehensive resource for students and the interested general reader, in both Shakespearean studies and in garden history, seeking as it does to examine every plant and aspect of gardens in Shakespeare's work... An impressive work of scholarship and research, it largely succeeds in this challenging goal. -- Jane Whitaker, University of Brighton, UK * Around The Globe *
Thomas and Faircloth's value-added concordance brings a contemporary academic treatment to William Shakespeare's use of plant and garden terminology. The terms in the roughly 350 entries appear in the forms in which Shakespeare used them and are alphabetically arranged. Most words are discussed in a minimum of a half-page, with those heavily used in the Bard's works—lily, garden, forest—explored over multiple pages. Entries place the word/item in its historical, social, and literary context; identify its placement within Shakespeare's writings; explicate his use of the word; and quote the associated line(s). The volume has an intriguing appendix in which each of the playwright's works is listed alphabetically by title, beneath which is a collective of all the plant and garden-based words used within it. VERDICT:Very useful for those libraries supporting Shakespearean scholars and those collecting the other titles in the series. -- Luca Sanborn * Library Journal *
This substantial book allows those interested in William Shakespeare’s uses of plant names, gardening terms and horticultural allusions to explore the facts, hypotheses and myths ... Undoubtedly an authoritative work of considerable effort and scholarship that should be consulted by everyone concerned with interpreting Shakespeare’s texts. -- E. Charles Nelson * Archives of Natural History *