Shakespeare In The Park

The Shakespeare Garden in Ellis Park has intrigued me ever since I moved to Cedar Rapids more than 30 years ago. I've driven by it hundreds of times but never really stopped until I was preparing today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.

The garden always seems rustic, yet beautiful, even this year despite suffering damage during last year's flood. The entrance gates, designed by Cedar Rapids artists Grant Wood and Marvin Cone, set this 1.4-acre oasis apart from the rest of Ellis Park near the Cedar River. And the garden itself is peaceful and relaxing, with an old stone bridge crossing a stream that has been dubbed "Little Avon" and several benches to rest your weary feet. 

I visited the garden because it's under the watchful eye of the Wednesday Shakespeare Club of Cedar Rapids, which has turned over its historical records to the Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids.

The club used to read three Shakespeare plays a year but now reads two. I learned that each and every one of Shakespeare's 37 plays is 5 acts, meaning that no matter which play the club choses to study, it takes 5 meetings at one act per meeting to read through one. Booklets the club puts out each year list the plays and each year they were studied -- as an example, the club has read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1971, 1977 and 1993; it has read "Tempest" in 1957, 1973, 1983 and 2004.

A unqiue aspect of the garden is that it contains only flowers, trees and shrubs mentioned in Shakespeare plays. The list is amazing.

As an example, here are the trees: apple, ash, aspen, balsam, bay, birch, box, broom, burnet, cedar, cherry, chestnut, crab, currants, cypress, elder, elm, grape, hawthorne, hazel, hemlock, locust, mandrakes, moss, mulberries, mushrooms, oaks, osier (weeping willow), pines, plum, quince, walnut, yew.

The list of plants is even more extensive. It includes carnation (saps-in-wine), columbine, crocus, daffodils, daisies, fern, honeysuckle, larkspur, lavender, lilies, marigolds, peonies, poppies and violets.

This garden is something to behold. Or, as Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet."