PHELIA:
There ’s  rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is  pansies, that’s for thoughts
. . . There ’s  fennel for you, and  columbines: there ’s  rue  for you; and here ’s some for me: we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There ’s a  daisy. I would give you some  violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end.
         — Hamlet ( IV, v, 172-9 )

COLUMBINE    [ Aqueligia vulgaris ]

Columbine is a perennial common throughout Europe.

“The variety of the colors of these flowers are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a blue or violet color, others a bluish, of flesh color, or deep or pale red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show.”
— John Parkinson (1567 – 1650)

A fourteenth-century manuscript recommended columbine drunk with ale to destroy the pestilence and drive out poisons, and Pseudo-Apuleius claimed that, “if anyone have with him this herb . . . he will not be barked at by dogs.”

The blossoms of the columbine have horn-shaped nectaries, which recall the common symbol for cuckoldry. Ophelia gives her columbines to the adulterous king.

<< Back to Intro    Next >>