[In the following essay, Levitsky contends that Shakespeare's use of certain gardening metaphors in Richard II may be traced to Baldwin's Treatise of Moral Philosophy.]

Peter Ure, in his introduction to the Arden Edition of Richard II, rejects the suggestion that the germ for the allegory in III.iv should be sought in any particular source.¹ Taking cognizance of similar metaphors in Traison and elsewhere, he nevertheless finds the principal features of the allegory common in medieval and Elizabethan literature. No single example which he discusses, however, contains both the weeding and the pruning metaphors. I should like to call attention to a “semblable” in William Baldwin's Treatise of Morall Phylosophie² which does contain both these figures expressed in language remarkably similar to Shakespeare's:

Even as a good Gardyner is verye dylygente about hys gardyne, wateryng the good and profytable herbes, and rootynge oute the unprofytable weedes: so shoulde a kynge attende to his commonweale, cheryshynge hys good and true subjectes and punyshyng suche as are false, and unprofytable.

As the cuttynge of vynes and all other trees, is cause of better and more plentyful fruyte: so the punyshmente of the badde causeth the good to florishe.

The author of this Treatise is the same Baldwin who edited (and contributed to) The Mirror for Magistrates, a book universally agreed to have been highly popular and influential in the second half of the sixteenth century. That his compilation of Proverbs and Adages, Precepts and Counsels, Semblables and Parables was likewise popular is evidenced by the fact that, in one form or another, it went into seventeen editions between 1547 and 1610.

After its second edition, one Thomas Palfreyman appears to have appropriated Baldwin's work and “inlarged” it. In 1552, Baldwin published his own “newlye perused and augmented” edition, chiding Palfreyman for having “plowe[d] with my oxen.”³ While Palfreyman's work is somewhat better organized than Baldwin's, the original compiler furnishes the reader with better examples of the art of amplification. For instance, Palfreyman has reduced the garden metaphor to the comparison of pruning and punishment, omitting completely the reference to rooting out weeds. He attributes the saying to Tully and categorizes it under the heading “Of Justice and Injustice.”⁴ Here one finds a mere commonplace concerning the necessity of protecting the good by punishing the evil.

Baldwin, on the other hand, by juxtaposing the weeding and pruning metaphors has appeared to place them both in the category of political philosophy.⁵ By means of dialogue between two actual gardeners, Shakespeare has further amplified and illustrated the political problem and its solution implied by Baldwin:

GARD.
Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth
…
You thus employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck
The soil's fertility from the wholesome flowers.
SERV.
… the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit trees all unpruned, …
… her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
GARD.
… Bolingbroke
Hath seized the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land
As we his garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:

.....

… superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.

(R2, III. iii. 33ff.)⁶

In addition to the actual verbal echoes indicated by italicized words, there is the obvious parallel between Baldwin's “cutting of vines” and Shakespeare's “wound[ing] the bark” or “superfluous branches we lop away.”

In his Preface, Baldwin says that when in doubt as to a source, he has followed the proverb, “Doubteful thinges oughte to bee interpreted [sic] to the beste.” By this rule, we should perhaps rest content to attribute the Garden Scene—germ and all—to Shakespeare. The striking parallels both of sentiment and expression in the two, however, make it seem highly probable that the seed which finally germinated in Shakespeare's garden was originally planted in Baldwin's. This is not at all to say that Shakespeare plowed with Baldwin's oxen.⁷

Notes

1. For a bibliography of scholarly opinion on this controversial subject prior to 1956, see both the Introduction (pp. li-lvii) and the notes (pp. 119-120) in the Arden Edition (London, 1955).

2. William Baldwin, A Treatise of Morall Phylosophie (London, 1547), no pagination. I have quoted from the 1547 edition, but the passage in question differs in Baldwin's later editions only in spelling.

3. See “The Epistle Dedicatore.”

4. William Baldwin, A Treatise of Morall Philosophie. … the fourth time since inlarged by Thomas Palfreyman (London, 1584), p. 72.

5. The significance of the arrangement and proliferation of items in such a compilation is pointed out in M. M. Phillips. The Adages of Erasmus (Cambridge, Eng., 1964).

6. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig (Chicago, 1951).

7. Two of Baldwin's oft-repeated proverbs which find echoes elsewhere in Shakespeare are those expressing the notion that silence indicates wisdom (See MV, I. i. 88ff.) and that nature can [almost] be changed by custom (See Ham., III. iv. 160ff.) These ideas doubtless could have been found in any of several other sources: in Baldwin what is remarkable is that they occur again and again.