MEDLAR

TOUCHSTONE

Truly the tree yields bad fruit.

ROSALIND

I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall

graff it with a MEDLAR;

then it will be the earliest fruit in the country,

for you’ll be rotten ere you be

half ripe, and that’s the right virtue

of the MEDLAR.

—As You Like It [Act IV, sc. 3]

MERCUTIO

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

Now will he sit under a MEDLAR tree

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call MEDLARS

when they laugh alone.

Romeo, that she were O, that she were

An open arse, thou a poperin’ pear!

—Romeo and Juliet [Act II, sc. 1]

APEMANTUS

There’s a MEDLAR for thee, eat it.

TIMON

On what I hate I feed not.

APEMANTUS

Dost hate a MEDLAR?

TIMON

Ay, though it looks like thee.

APEMANTUS

An thou hadst hated

MEDDLERS sooner, thou

Shouldst have loved thyself better now.

—Timon of Athens [Act IV, sc. 3]

LUCIO

They would have married me to the rotten

MEDLAR.

—Measure for Measure [Act IV, sc. 3]