"_Gardener._ Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight; Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays, That look too lofty in our commonwealth; All must be even in our government. You thus employ'd, I will go root away The noisome weeds, that without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. _Servant._ Why should we, in the compass of a pale, Keep law, and form, and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok'd up, Her fruit-trees all unprun'd, her hedges ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars? _Gardener._ Hold thy peace! He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf. The weeds that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter, That seem'd in eating him to hold him up, Are pluck'd up, root and all, by Bolingbroke; I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green. _Servant._ What, are they dead? _Gardener._ They are; and Bolingbroke Hath seiz'd the wasteful king.--O, what pity is it, That he hath not so trimm'd and dress'd his land As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees, Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood, With too much riches it confound itself: Had he done so to great and growing men, They might have liv'd to bear, and he to taste Their fruits of duty. All superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live: Had he done so, himself had borne the crown, Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down." Mr. Ellacombe, commenting upon this dialogue, remarks: "This most interesting passage would almost tempt us to say that Shakespeare was a gardener by profession; certainly no other passages that have been brought to prove his real profession are more minute than this. It proves him to have had practical experience in the work, and I think we may safely say that he was no mere 'prentice hand in the use of the pruning-knife." But this play was written in London, when he could hardly have known anything more of practical gardening than he had learned in his boyhood and youth at Stratford.