Any Shakespeare play or sonnet - mention of a vegetable

[Summergale]

Hello, I am new to this forum. I wonder if anyone could tell me if any vegetable was ever mentioned in a Shakespearean play or sonnet. If so, please let me know which play, where mentioned and which vegetable. Thanks.

[nico_nomnom]

Turnips were probably mentioned somewhere. I have a feeling that some form of fruit/veg was mentioned in Misdummer Night's Dream.

[MarkBastable]

I can think of only three - four if you count both vegetables in the second one. Five, I suppose, if you count garlic as a vegetable.

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"Have a care, gentle coz. Bear it hence as 'twere a delight - sweet fessock or collyflower - prepared for the dining of princes." Henry VII, Act III, Scene 2

"A monster! A creature ill-formed and bent! Visage green as pea-broth and eyen yellow as carrot!" Tamburlaine, Act II, Scene 3

"And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy." A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act IV, Scene 2.

[Summergale]

Thanks so much. Wow, you know your Shakespeare. Are you an English prof?

[MarkBastable]

Why do you want to know, by the way?

[Summergale]

I am a member of the CFUW (Canadian Federation of University Women) and I belong to one of their subgroups Gourmet Club. Every six weeks or so we meet at someone's house, who hosts, and the rest of us bring a dish. There is always a theme. And this month's theme is "Book Fare", the dish needs to have literary reference, which we will share when we meet. It's fun.

[MarkBastable]

Ah, okay. Usually when people post a question like that having recently joined the forum, they are students trying to get us to do their assignments for them.

As you're not doing that, but just looking for something for fun, I'll own up -I invented the first two quotes. The third one's genuine though.

[Summergale]

Oh no, I was going to find a yummy cauliflower dish to take. I can't possibly take onions and garlic!

[MarkBastable]

duplicate post

[MarkBastable]

Oh no, I was going to find a yummy cauliflower dish to take. I can't possibly take onions and garlic!

As it's the CFUW, you might be able to take cauliflower on the strength of Mark Twain's assertion: Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.


I do feel bad at having deceived you. I'll have a look round to see if I can find a vegetable reference in some other Elizabethan. The phrase 'vegetable love' occurs to me. I think it's John Donne.

Give me ten minutes.


..got it.

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" contains many striking phrases and images, but perhaps most puzzling to modern readers is one in this promise from the speaker to his beloved: "Had we but world enough, and time . . . /My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires and more slow." One critic has playfully praised Marvell for his ability to make one "think of pumpkins and eternity in one breath," but vegetable in this case is only indirectly related to edible plants. Here the word is used figuratively in the sense "having the property of life and growth, as does a plant," a use based on an ancient religious and philosophical notion of the tripartite soul


..which seems to me a justification for cooking anything you damn well please.

[Summergale]

Thanks, and don't feel bad. I understand. Where did Mark Twain make that cauliflower/cabbage comment?

[MarkBastable]

I dunno. It's one of those gags that just sticks in the memory. I verified it at a couple of 'Identify that Quote' sites though.

[Summergale]

Found it!

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

[MarkBastable]

Still think you should go with my confected Shakespeare.

[Summergale]

y "confected" did you mean the two that you made up? I doubt anyone would know whether it was genuine or not, the lines sounded just like something Shakespeare would write.

[Lokasenna]

There's a long discourse on leeks in Henry V - which is great if you wanted to make leek soup or something...