An Ode to The Yellowburst
It is one of the great misreadings in literary history.
When Shakespeare wrote “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” and put it in the mouth of his most famous creation he wasn’t talking about the dreariness of the ‘prison of Denmark’ and by implication the dreariness of the prison of his own soul and the puny defenses that the mind puts up against despair.
He was talking about dandelions.
What else could he be talking about? Existential dread?
Come on.
What other creature than the dandelion is so maligned merely because we have decided it should be so?
You know, Bill was a homeowner like the rest of us. He had that big two story, five bedroom place back there in Stratford-on-Avon, warm and open great room with the high raftered ceilings, great curb appeal, good schools, and with a home in the heartland of England you’re going to get a lawn, and with a lawn you are going to get dandelions.
Shakespeare didn’t spell out his meaning, he was famous for not spoon-feeding his audience, but even a cursory examination of the textual evidence argues strongly for the dandelion interpretation.
He couldn’t stand the way that humans discriminate for little good reason, or few, or none, and was always fighting back against the unreasoning prejudices of his time.
We can imagine that, as today, there were harsh, unyielding critics of the dandelion, small of soul, mind, and heart. And yet did anybody ever stop and ask, ‘what exactly is it that you have against these little guys?’
Not a soul.
Not until Shakespeare came along with his now famous line.
Who hasn’t looked around and said to themselves, ‘now how is it that we have come to this? This unreasoning hostility to overgrown grass, to unspread cedar mulch, to untrimmed trees, and unweeded gardens, and most of all to this most unoffending and sprightly plant, the dandelion?’
I know I have. I have a lot of poetry in my soul for one thing.
With many opportunities to express animosity to the humble dandelion if he had so wished – he could have had Lady Macbeth say, ‘out, out of my lawn, damned dandelion;’ or have Hamlet himself reference ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous dandelions’’ if he was so inclined – but you will search the entire oeuvre of the master and not find a word against these cheerful, sunny welcomers of spring. I’ve looked.
He was a man of large spirit, Shakespeare was, and had an embracing and life-affirming temperament.
Can we really imagine that the first thing he thought of when he saw these boisterous harbingers of the new season was “well, better kill them all.”
It beggars the imagination.
Well, that was Bill for you, and it is beyond the speculation of this scholar at least to picture the playwright bent over a shovel, dislodging a sprightly, insouciant flower from his small tract of the fabled English countryside simply because that is the way it had always been done.
Rather I picture him bending down and patting the emerging crop of Yellowbursts on the head — yes, patting them on the head — and saying, ‘go to it, little fellows, brighten these fair fields, there will always be an England, and if I have anything to say about it they will always be speckled, nay, submerged in your yellow glory.”
The careful reader will note that for the word dandelion, which isn’t bad, isn’t bad at all, with its connotation of a bright yellow scruff around the neck of a roaring lion, I have substituted the new word ‘Yellowburst.”
Shakespeare himself was one of the great inventors of new words so we only carry on a grand tradition here.
“Yellowburst” gets the point across, as does “the Globe of Sol,” as does “Spring’s Herald,’ as does “Ball of the Sun,” or even “Ball o’ the Sun.” ‘Sungazer,” too has a nice ring, though I believe the name may already be taken by a line of RVs.
You see in each of these examples a perfectly pleasing substitution for the somewhat shopworn ‘dandelion.’
Why, the makers of these pre-emergents, whatever pre-emergents are, and I don’t want to know, would quickly go bankrupt if they advertised the poison’s ability to quickly rid your lawn of Yellowbursts or Ball o’ the Suns.
The careful buyer would look at those words and say, “why in the world would I want to do that to these harmless and cheering woodland flora? Why in the world?”
And he would have a point.
Once we got this ball rolling and lifted this pointless prejudice, I can see the movement juggernauting.
The highschooler going to her first prom dimples sweetly when her date opens the florist box and pulls out a stunning corsage. “My absolute favorites!” she cries. “Dandelions!”
Opera-goers, an enthusiastic bunch overall, are always at the trigger point of throwing flowers onto the stage to reward the stunning aria of the visiting soprano. What better breed to choose for the occasion than a pleasingly limp gathering of dandelions?
You, as have I, have perhaps seen just about as many weddings as meets the lifetime recommended requirement where roses provided a theme and a décor.
Roses however, die, and are not suitable for such an enduring joining of hearts.
Dandelions, by all the evidence, never exactly die at all but just go on and on like the endless sea.
The Kentucky Derby and that big horseshoe shaped blanket of roses the girls in the evening gowns drape over the winner? How much more pleasing and more refreshing to the eye would it be to see a thick-weaved layering of dandelions in all their bounteous yellow glory?
There is, in addition to its other many benefits, a literary quality to the dandelion that cannot be denied and which Shakespeare likely had in mind when he crafted his famous line.
I know of no other plant that so clearly has a Part 1 and a Part 2. A sequel if you will.
From the merest hint of green on the lawn, through vigorous growth, finally bursting into yellow radiance….oh it is a sight to lift the heart, is it not?
But hold on, for time waits for no man or domestic lawn weed and at our backs we always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
For now the proud yellow head droops and weakens, and then the ague of age is upon it.
The once-mighty warrior grows old and weak and dry, until finally it turns entirely to seed and is blown by the West Wind to all corners of the lawn, or preferably, your neighbor’s lawn.
Is there a finer or nobler or sadder demise in all of the vegetable or animal kingdoms? I can’t imagine what it is. It almost in truth amounts to overacting, but I think the dandelion pulls it off.
My goodness, entire sonnet sequences have been built on less.
And never a word of complaint from the dandelion himself, who has reason to question the fundamental rules of the game.
I mean he gave it everything he had, the whole glorious burst of yellow thing, the whole announcing the glad tidings of this world thing, and then the somber and dignified decline into old age thing, a morality play playing out on our front and back and side and the other side lawns every season, and what does he get?
The pre-emergent lawn treatment, that’s what he gets.
Some of us who are far-sighted, who are not simple lemmings in the matter of lawn maintenance, have a vision and it is not a humble one.
We see, from back yard to front yard to side yard to the other side yard, nay, to the neighbors’ lawns on either side of us and beyond, not segments or shards or fragments of the human soul and the Great Earth’s bounty but a rolling landscape from horizon to horizon of a fertile earthen sea, all connected in one yellow burst of glory.
We say do away with the grass lawn entirely and let them be built entirely of dandelions.
It is an idea whose time has come.
