Katherine Duncan-Jones: The flower power of Shakespeare
From a speech to the Royal Society of Literature by an English don at Somerville College, Oxford
Though, in 1913, Gertrude Stein claimed that "Rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose", this is not how it seemed to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. For them, a rose could range from a monarch to a tavern, from a gold coin – a "rose noble" – to a great "rose" window in a cathedral, from a flamboyant shoe decoration to the Platonic idea of beauty.
And roses could be encountered in a huge variety of environments, from the kitchen to the battlefield, from the playhouse to the palace, from the cottage garden to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Roses were at once commonplace and precious: met with everywhere, yet nowhere lacking meaning or value.
Roses make only a cameo appearance in the brief but upbeat ending of Richard III, but that's all that is needed. Following his victory at Bosworth, Henry Earl of Richmond plans to strengthen his claim to the throne by marrying Elizabeth Beaufort, daughter of Edward IV: "And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament, We will unite the white rose and the red."
The Tudor rose, with red petals outside and white in the middle, is about to be born. This rose will eventually beget a million teashops, B&Bs and trite advertisements for British/English tourism. It has even given its name to a firm offering "executive" parking at Gatwick. It may even be a distant aunt or uncle of that misshapen rose that is the current logo of the Labour Party.
The rose was one of Shakespeare's trademark images. Yet, like TS Eliot in Little Gidding, he knew what an impossible challenge it was "to summon up the spectre of a Rose". Unless distilled, dried, candied or captured in words or visual art, roses die "too soon".
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