SOURCE: Levitsky, R. “Another ‘Germ’ of the Garden Scene in Richard II?” Shakespeare Quarterly 24, no. 4 (autumn 1973): 466-67.

In the following essay, Levitsky contends that Shakespeare's use of certain gardening metaphors in Richard II may be traced to Baldwin's Treatise of Moral Philosophy.

Peter Ure, in his introduction to the Arden Edition of Richard II, rejects the suggestion that the germ for the allegory in III.iv should be sought in any particular source.¹ Taking cognizance of similar metaphors in Traison and elsewhere, he nevertheless finds the principal features of the allegory common in medieval and Elizabethan literature. No single example which he discusses, however, contains both the weeding and the pruning metaphors. I should like to call attention to a “semblable” in William Baldwin's Treatise of Morall Phylosophie² which does contain both these figures expressed in language remarkably similar to Shakespeare's:

Even as a good Gardyner is verye...