I am sure many flower lovers would agree with Emilia’s view on roses that she so eloquently expresses in Shakespeare’s and Fletcher’s play Two Noble Kinsmen. Nor would I be surprised if Shakespeare’s favourite flower was the rose. He mentions roses over seventy times, more than any other flower.

Roses’ conventional positive associations with love, beauty and sweetness are familiar to all and border on the cliché. Shakespeare also used the rose to convey the painful side of love and the passing of time. In Juliet’s lament on love, the rose is a metaphor for the darker aspect of love.

‚Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.‘

William Shakespeare