Flowers, Shakespeare, and the horror of bad smells
I first came across the Alcuin Society Awards for best Canadian book design several years ago when researching for this interview with multi award winner C.S. (Scott) Richardson. I recall being rather pleased that I actually had several award winning books in my collection, including Atmospheres Apollinaire by Mark Frutkin (Porcupine’s Quill, 1988). Ever since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for award winning books, which of course means that Procupine’s titles now rarely go unexamined or unbought at book sales. The most recent incident (National Library Annual Used Book Sale): acquiring A Gathering of Flowers from Shakespeare, with woodcuts by Gerard Brender a Brandis, quotation selection and interpretation by F. David Hoeniger.
Printed on Porcupine’s patented laid paper, and containing delicately embossed floral free end papers, the book highlights various flowers referred to by Shakespeare, with woodcut illustrations and accompanying commentary. If you dig flora, the bard, and beautiful books, this one’s for you. So, incidentally, at least on the first two counts, is Caroline Spurgeon’s amazing Shakespeare’s Imagery. Talk about a enlightening, entertaining companion. Here she is on smells:
"…Shakespeare seems more sensitive to the horror of bad smells than to the allure of fragrant ones. Naturally he loves ‘the sweet smell of different flowers’…he notes the sweetness of the violet, the eglantine (sweet briar) and the damask rose; but it is suggestive that in his most sustained and exquisite appreciation of the rose, what chiefly appeals to him is the fact that, unlike other flowers, roses even when faded never smell badly, but that
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
What he shrinks from especially is a fair flower with ‘the rank smell of weeds’, or a sweet-smelling flower which turns very much the reverse when dead. We can sense the repulsion in the words,
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."