The Women Who Used Shakespeare’s Roses

Physicians and apothecaries were not the only prescribers and producers of rose-based remedies, scents and foods in Shakespeare’s day. Early modern housewives often kept a recipe or ‘receipt’ book which was a bit different from its modern-day equivalent. As well as instructions like those in Gerard’s Herball for how to make ‘most pleasant meats and banqueting dishes as tarts and such like’ from ripe rose-hips, the books recorded household tips, such as how to perfume your gloves with rose water or how to keep your dresses moth free. Sometimes they were compiled over multiple generations and handed down through the family. Scholars have suggested that these books represent the first genre of women's medical writing, as they contain formulations for household medicines, including those made from roses. It is likely that Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna, with ready advice available from her physician husband, kept such a record. Perhaps John Hall provided his wife Susanna with medical training?

It was not uncommon for women to be skilled in making ‘confections’. The Queen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline can ‘make perfumes’, ‘distil’ and ‘preserve’, but her behaviour rouses the suspicions of the doctor who taught her apothecary skills.

Of course – presumably unlike Susanna – the Queen is trying to use her knowledge to poison her stepdaughter Imogen, so the doctor is right to be suspicious. He cleverly swaps the poison for a sleep draught. We learn at the end of the scene that the Queen and her ladies have been picking ‘violets, cowslips and primroses’, presumably to make medicines.

 

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