WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was a lover of nature in all her guises having gleaned his knowledge first hand as a youth in the Warwickshire countryside. His observations of the coarser side of nature feature strongly in the bawdier elements of his comedies, while the more dangerous side of nature—the hunting, the killing, the drama of life and death—is aptly suited to the tragedies and history plays.

This delightful gift book contains selections of floral and animal imagery from Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies, history plays, sonnets and longer poems.

The text is illuminated with period illustrations taken from an early Tudor pattern book housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

From the book