GARDENER    Poor Queen, so all thy state might be no worse,

I would my skill were subject to thy curse.

Here did she fall a tear; here in this place

I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.

Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen

In the remembrance of a weeping queen.              Exeunt             (3.4.102-107)

The Gardener is measured, dignified, philosophical to the end, apparently not at all discomforted by the Queen’s curse but rather full of pity at her grief-stricken, angry state. Poor Queen, he says, if it prevented things getting even worse for you (which is what’s going to happen, is implicit), then I’d willingly let my skill, my abilities as a gardener to be subject to thy curse, so that my plants would never grow again. But that’s not how the world works: her words are powerless. Plants grow, with or without much human intervention, as the Gardener’s exchanges with his assistant have shown. A note for the Queen, that she must weep as she speaks and exits: here did she fall a tear (the Gardener is observant; for the sake of the image one can gloss over the fact that salt water stunts the growth of plants, or kills them). The Gardener will mark the spot with a bank of rue—a clump? a bed? a bank of rue, unlike one of wild thyme, oxlips and violets (Midsummer Night’s Dream) would not be an especially lovely bower on which to lie—but it’s mostly here for the wordplay. The rue is a bitter herb, a sour herb of grace: the alternative name long predates Shakespearean usage, but is probably popularised most of all by Ophelia’s comment, often addressed to Gertrude, ‘There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference’. As well as being bitter, for the Queen’s bitter tears, the sourness of her plight, rue enables the Gardener to end his speech with compassion: rue, even for ruth, for pity. It will grow in that garden as a remembrance, a reminder, of a weeping queen.

And with those three neat rhyming couplets, this extraordinary little scene (so much more than an allegory), and the play’s third act, are at an end. Backstage, pretty much every other actor in the company is limbering up and taking very deep breaths…