eed, which
was used for many purposes in Palestine, and is a most graceful plant
for English gardens, being perfectly hardy, and growing every year from
12ft. to 14ft. in height, but very seldom flowering.[240:1]

But in Shakespeare, as in most writers, the Reed is simply the emblem of
weakness, tossed about by and bending to a superior force, and of little
or no use--"a Reed that will do me no service" (No. 1). It is also the
emblem of the blessedness of submission, and of the power that lies in
humility to outlast its oppressor--

"Like as in tempest great,
Where wind doth bear the stroke,
Much safer stands the bowing Reed
Then doth the stubborn Oak."

Shakespeare mentions but two uses to which the Reed was applied, the
thatching of houses (No. 3), and the making of Pan or Shepherd's pipes
(No. 6). Nor has he anything to say of its beauty, yet the Reeds of our
river sides (_Arundo phragmites_) are most graceful plants, especially
when they have their dark plumes of flowers, and this Milton seems to
have felt--

"Forth flourish't thick the flustering Vine, forth crept
The swelling Gourd, up stood the Cornie Reed
Embattled in her field."

_Paradise Lost_, book vii.

FOOTNOTES:

[240:1] I have only been able to find one record of the flowering of
Arundo donax in England--"Mem: Arundo donax in flower, 15th September,
1762, the first time I ever saw it, but this very hot dry summer has
made many exotics flower. . . . It bears a handsome tassel of
flowers."--P. COLLINSON'S _Hortus Collinsonianus_.

RHUBARB.

_Macbeth._

What Rhubarb, Cyme, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?

_Macbeth_, act v, sc. 3 (55).

Andrew Boorde writing from Spayne in 1535, to Thomas Cromwell, says, "I
have sent to your Mastershipp the seeds of Reuberbe the whiche come
forth of Barbary in this parte ytt ys had for a grett tresure."[241:1]
But the plant does not seem to have become established and Shakespeare
could only have known the imported drug, for the Rheum was first grown
by Parkinson, though it had been described in an uncertain way both by
Lyte and Gerard. Lyte said: "Rha, as it is thought, hath great broad
leaves;" and then he says: "We have found here in the gardens of
certaine diligent herboristes that strange plant which is thought by
some to be Rha or Rhabar