Interior View: The Shakespeare Garden: Weinberg College

Interior View: The Shakespeare Garden

two women standing in the Shakespeare garden

Tucked between Tech and the Garrett Theological Seminary, the Shakespeare Garden is a place of repose on a busy college campus, a sanctuary so tranquil one might hear a leaf drop. For decades, it has been a place for the studious to reconnect with nature, for lovers to linger and for the frenetic to find peace. Laurie Shannon, the Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of English Literature, appreciates the spot. “Whether you love Shakespeare or not, anyone in our culture can make good use of a retreat like this,” says Shannon, a scholar of Shakespeare and natural history. “We all need to get out, away from our screens, and conjure a different relationship to the physical world.” As the garden marks its 100th year, Shannon explains how the space brings the literary and scientific world of Shakespeare to life.

The Shakespeare Garden

"An art that nature makes": In Shakespeare’s time, natural forms of life were understood to have specific properties: useful and healing, perhaps, or toxic and deadly. “The garden is a kind of archive of the notions and knowledge behind Shakespeare’s systems of metaphor,” says Shannon (above). “Whatever quality is in a particular plant is related to the quality of an idea. It’s a system of cosmic sympathies.”

The hawthorn hedge: “There are a lot of hawthorns in Shakespeare. It is a beautiful, flowering tree, but it also has thorns. That double-edged quality is a prompt to think twice, to think again. Distinguish the beautiful blossom from the thorn, and consider the different properties of things.”

Tech’s backyard: When the sprawling science facility was built in the 1930s, it was situated so as not to disturb the Bard’s yard. The juxtaposition quietly challenges the assumption that the arts and sciences are distinct. “This garden is, in fact, about knowledge of the natural world, as the 16th century might have represented it to itself,” Shannon says.

“For so work the honey bees”: In? Henry V, the hierarchical bee colony is portrayed as the model for an orderly monarchy. “Although it was not until much later that they understood that it was not a king bee that ruled, but a queen bee,” Shannon says. “That was big news in the 17th century.”

Stone bench: “A lot of intrigue happens in the garden in Shakespeare’s plays,” Shannon says. “This bench is the sort of place where you’d be reading the misdirected love letter, or something like that.”

Contemplative prompts: A bronze plaque invites visitors into Shakespeare’s world. It features quotes from his plays, including this one from The Winter’s Tale: “Here’s flowers for you; hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram; The marigold that goes to bed with the sun.”

The Garden Club’s gift: Fifteen years after establishing the garden in 1915, the Evanston Garden Club dedicated the space to Northwestern with this memorial. “Here we hope the students will find peace and quiet refreshment for soul and mind,” the club declared. “The love of a garden is part of their inheritance from the past, and will, we hope, always remain as a basis for a full and happy life.”