Talk:Cowthorpe Oak

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A fact from Cowthorpe Oak appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 January 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Cowthorpe Oak was mentioned in Shakespeare's As You Like It?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Cowthorpe Oak.

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Shakespeare? Dubious[edit]

Here's the quotation from As You Like It:

Oli. When last the yong Orlando parted from you, He left a promise to returne againe Within an houre, and pacing through the Forrest, Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancie, Loe what befell: he threw his eye aside, And marke what obiect did present it selfe Vnder an old Oake, whose bows were moss’d with age And high top, bald with drie antiquitie: A wretched ragged man, ore-growne with haire Lay sleeping on his back; about his necke A greene and guilded snake had wreath’d it selfe, Who with her head, nimble in threats approach’d The opening of his mouth: but sodainly Seeing Orlando, it vnlink’d it selfe, And with indented glides, did slip away Into a bush, vnder which bushes shade A Lyonnesse, with vdders all drawne drie, Lay cowching head on ground, with catlike watch When that the sleeping man should stirre; for’tis The royall disposition of that beast To prey on nothing, that doth seeme as dead: This seene, Orlando did approach the man, And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

What's to indicate that the oak discussed is the Cowthorpe? Could somebody post the exact wording from the Hight book upon which this claim appears to be based? Thanks. Doops | talk 03:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hight has the quote "an oak whose boughs were mossed with age, an high top bald with dry antiquity" followed by "William Shakespears describing the Cowthorpe Oak in As You Like It, c.1600". I've qualified it in the article with an attribution to Hight - Dumelow (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

From the way you phrase it, it sounds like it's an image caption, a chapter epigraph, a pull-quote, or something like that (rather than ordinary text in the body text of the book)? In any case, I really don't think that Hight is making an actual factual claim about Shakespeare; he's being romantic / fantastical. I think we'd better leave it out. Doops | talk

On looking at the image gallery on British Library website ([1]), it occurs to me that that's probably the source for the Shakespearean confusion. The text (on the back of the 1806 aquatint, if I understand correctly) ends, in the fashion of the time, with a flowery literary allusion — namely, a bit of the Shakespeare quotation in question. It makes no claim that Shakespeare was making an explicit description of the Cowthorpe, however. My hunch is that Hight seized that ball and ran with it. Doops | talk 08:53, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS — As far as I can tell there are no references to the Cowthorpe in the original Evelyn editions of Sylva, nor in Hunter's 1825 version. There is a reference in the 1786 version, but it doesn't include the iconic 'children of the forest' wording; that seems to come from the 1776 edition, which doesn't seem to be available online. Somebody with access to a library can find it there and add a direct citation; in the meanwhile, I've cited the passage via an obscure botanical journal article (which is available on Google books). Doops | talk 08:53, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]