References to 'darnel', a weed, occur three times in contexts that involve France, civil war, and the Duke of Burgundy. The first time Joan of Arc taunts the Duke of Burgundy, who is on the English side:
Puc.
41 Good morrow, gallants, want ye corn for bread?
42 I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast
43 Before he'll buy again at such a rate.
44 'Twas full of darnel; do you like the taste?
The second time the word occurs in a very eloquent speech by the Duke of Burgundy who, conjuring up the image of a fertile and well-ordered France, asks
34 Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
35 Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
36 Should not in this best garden of the world,
37 Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
38 Alas, she hath from France too long been chas'd,
39 And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
40 Corrupting in it own fertility.
41 Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
42 Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,
43 Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
44 Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
45 The darnel, hemlock, and rank femetary
46 Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
47 That should deracinate such savagery; (Hn5 5.2.34-47)
'Darnel' also collocates with 'femiter' in its last occurrence in King Lear. Cordelia is speaking. She is the leader of an invading force from France, and the Duke of Burgundy once wooed her. Read in the context of the other passages, the image of the mad king in a wild field acquires a more obviously political dimension:
1 Alack, 'tis he! Why, he was met even now
2 As mad as the vex'd sea, singing aloud,
3 Crown'd with rank [femiter] and furrow-weeds,
4 With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flow'rs,
5 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
6 In our sustaining corn. (KiL 4.4.1-6)
July 25, 1999
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