PRIMROSE

QUEEN

The violets, cowslips, and the PRIMROSES,

Bear to my closet.

—Cymbeline [Act I, sc. 5]

QUEEN MARGARET

I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,

Look pale as PRIMROSE

with blood-drinking sighs,

And all to have the noble duke alive.

—Henry VI, Pt. 2 [Act III, sc. 2]

ARVIRAGUS

Thou shalt not lack

The flower that’s like thy face,

pale PRIMROSE . . .

—Cymbeline [Act IV, sc. 2]

HERMIA

In the wood where often you and I

Upon faint PRIMROSE-beds

were wont to lie.

—A Midsummer Night’s Dream [Act I, sc. 1]

PERDITA

Pale PRIMROSES,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phœbus in his strength.

—Winter’s Tale [Act IV, sc. 4]

OPHELIA

Like a puff’d and reckless libertine,

Himself the PRIMROSE path

of dalliance treads

And recks not his own rede.

—Hamlet [Act I, sc. 3]

PORTER

I had thought to have let in some of

all professions that go the PRIMROSE way

to the everlasting bonfire.

—Macbeth [Act II, sc. 3]

SONG [BOY]

PRIMROSE, first-born child of Ver

Merry spring-time’s harbinger . . .

—Two Noble Kinsmen [Act I, sc. 1]

Witness this PRIMROSE bank whereon I lie.

—Venus and Adonis