The Macbeth Garden

Video guide transcript

[Shakespeare]: Here is the Macbeth Garden.

I[nterlocutor]: What plants did you, Will Shakespeare, include the play Macbeth?

[Shakespeare]: Not as many as in most other plays. The trees are yew and chestnut; the flowers are primroses and lilies. There are also hemlock, rhubarb, senna, balm, corn -- which means to us all grains – and

the insane root that takes the reason prisoner

[Interlocutor]: Why so few?

[Shakespeare]: Serene contemplation of nature’s beauty and bounty does not befit a play like Macbeth. It makes little mention of plant life at all, and that little speaks chiefly of poison and destruction. For example, the witches cast hemlock and yew into their dreadful stew as they chant:

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Hemlock is a notorious poison. Yew, also poisonous, is common in English graveyards. In this garden you see yew, but not hemlock. Hemlock grows well here, but it is not a plant that the gardeners choose to encourage.

Rhubarb is here as well: a plant whose leaves are poisonous, even though its stalks are useful. Macbeth wants its medicinal power, wishing to cleanse the invading English out of Scotland’s guts:

What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence?

Today you take rhubarb stalks mainly as food, but the senna plant is still very much in use as a purgative medicine.

There are few plants in Macbeth that we did not think dangerous in themselves. And even these lend their aid to the fear and horror of the play. Think on the porter, the only person in the whole play who provokes laughter. He talks of the primrose, such as sometimes blooms here in this Garden. For us a path among the primroses spoke of simple beauty and springtime in the country. But in this play that path is

the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire

—it is the way to Hell. The path to Heaven is difficult and twisted, while the road to Hell is broad and inviting.