Tiptoe through the Tulips with Shax
This copy of Flowers from Shakespeare’s Garden is a book in the Hill Memorial Library collection. The book is a reprinted version from 1906, which was published in London by Cassell & Compy. The original was published in the 1860s and was written and illustrated by Walter Crane. It is a relatively thin book with less than a hundred pages and a hard dark green cover with an illustration of a woman and the title on the front in gold. The edges of the book are worn and there are specks of white on the front cover along with a small black mark that appear have come from wear. The binding on the books interior appears to have been damaged, but all of the pages have been secured. The illustrations are all beautiful and each one has Walter Crane’s artist seal at the bottom in red. Each page has an illustration on one side and is blank on the other side. This is possibly because this would make the printing process easier. The only text in the book are quotes from Shakespeare’s plays. The flowers names throughout the book are written in red as opposed to the rest of the text which is black. Each illustration is devoted to one quote from one of his works. There is writing on the title page in pencil that are possibly a previous owner’s initials. The back cover of the book has the title in the top left corner in gold with a wreath around it and the company that reprinted it in the bottom right corner. It is a gorgeous book that interprets the floral aspect of Shakespeare’s work.
Our group’s critical paratext is based on the book Flowers from Shakespeares Garden by Walter Crane. We began this project by sitting down in a library and simply reading the book and paying close attention to detail about the pictures in the book as well. Our group of five people sat and debated about what would be a great method to introduce the book to the Internet. We discussed things like dressing up as the characters themselves, collecting similar flowers to recreate the images, modernizing the photos, making black and white versions of them, painting pictures, dressing up stuffed animals like the characters, and many other ideas. Eventually, we thought about what the book was missing. With this new train of thought, we came up with the idea to create images of our own to represent the characters and objects that should have been in the book, but were left out or not considered originally. We decided that this would be the best course of action for a project like this one for several reasons. We wanted to create something from nothing in order to make it our own instead of trying to completely copy the images from the book itself. We also believed that the anyone can recreate the images, but not everyone would think to add to them and hope to inspire others to not only look at what is, but also what could be.
Our next obstacle was deciding how to represent things from Shakespeare’s other works and what those objects. We decided that one of the most overlooked flowers from Shakespeare’s plays that was not in this book was the flower from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the play, Oberon and Puck discuss the existence of a flower that would solve the issues of the main conflict of the play. Oberon is struck with an idea that if he can not make the individuals fall truly in love with one another that the illusion of love would have to suffice. He then remembers the existence of a flower that makes individuals fall asleep and fall in love with the first individual they lay their eyes upon.
“Yet marked 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’”.
-Oberon (II.I.165-169)
We later came up with the idea to add the willow tree Ophelia was donning the flowers upon in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We considered this a pivotal moment that had to be represented in this book. We believed that this moment was a crucial moment in the play because it led to Ophelia’s death causing Hamlet to be driven even further into his own madness. Our idea was to dress up someone as a willow and have the don themselves with the objects Ophelia was downing on the willow tree in the play. Queen Gertrude described to Laertes how Ophelia died while decorating the tree.
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them”.
-Queen Gertrude (IV.VII.165-170)