Shakespeare’s Garden of Eloquence: The Poetry of the Whole Land

Abstract

There is tremendous potency in those lines in Richard II in which the Gardener’s Servant expresses his concern that King Richard has neglected to tend his garden:

Why should we, in the compasse of a Pale,

Keepe Law and Forme, and due Proportion,

Shewing as in a Modell our firme Estate?

When our Sea-walled Garden, the whole Land,

Is full of Weedes, her fairest Flowers choakt vp,

Her Fruit-trees all vnpruin’d, her Hedges ruin’d,

Her Knots disorder’d, and her wholesome Hearbes Swarming with Caterpillers.¹

(III.iv 40-7)