from Stratford-on-Avon," it is said, "there can be no doubt
that the wild arum is the plant alluded to by Shakespeare," but there
seems no authority for this statement.

_Love-in-Idleness_, or, with more accuracy, _Love-in-Idle_,[521] is one
of the many nicknames of the pansy or heart's-ease--a term said to be
still in use in Warwickshire. It occurs in "Midsummer-Night's Dream"
(ii. 1),[522] where Oberon says:

"Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness."

[521] See Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," 1870,
p. 139.

[522] Cf. "Taming of the Shrew," i. 1.

The phrase literally signifies love in vain, or to no purpose, as Taylor
alludes to it in the following couplet:

"When passions are let loose without a bridle,
Then precious time is turned to _love and idle_."

That flowers, and pansies especially, were used as love-philters,[523]
or for the object of casting a spell over people, in Shakespeare's day,
is shown in the passage already quoted. where Puck and Oberon amuse
themselves at Titania's expense. Again, a further reference occurs (iv.
1), where the fairy king removes the spell:

"But first I will release the fairy queen.
Be as thou wast wont to be:
See as thou wast wont to see:
Dian's bud[524] o'er Cupid's flower[525]
Hath such force and blessed power.
Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen."

[523] Cf. what Egeus says (i. 1) when speaking of Lysander:

"This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes
And interchanged love-tokens with my child."

[524] Dian's bud is the bud of the _Agnus castus_, or chaste
tree. "The virtue this herbe is, that he will kepe man and
woman chaste." "Macer's Herbal," 1527.

[525] Cupid's flower, another name for the pansy.

"It has been suggested," says Mr. Aldis Wright,[526] "that the device
employed by Oberon to enchant Titania by anointing her eyelids with the
juice of a flower, may have been borrowed by Shakespeare from the
Spanish romance of 'Diana' by George of Montemayor. But apart from the
difficulty which arises from the fact that no English translation of
this romance is known before that published by Young in 1598, there is
no necessity to sup