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Parsley

Partridge

Peas (pease)

A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, 1:
A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 3, Scene 1 BOTTOM: I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you, sir?

BOTTOM: I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. (IV, 1)

Love's Labour's Lost, V, 2:
BEROWNE: This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease, And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs....

Twelfth Night, I, 5:
MALVOLIO Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a cooling when 'tis almost an apple: 'tis with him in standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favoured and he speaks very shrewishly; one would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him.

The Tempest, IV, 1:
IRIS Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom -groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn: thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky, Whose watery arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain: Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

Pear

All's Well That Ends Well, I, 1:
PAROLLES: Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with it?

Pepper

The Merry Wives of Windsor, III, 5: FORD: ...I will now take the lecher; he is at my house; he cannot 'scape me; 'tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I'll be horn-mad.

Twelfth Night, III, 4:
SIR ANDREW: Here's the challenge, read it: warrant there's vinegar and pepper in't.

Pheasant

Pickle

Anthony and Cleopatra, II, 5:
CLEOPATRA: What say you? Hence, [Strikes him again] Horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes Like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head: [She hales him up and down] Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine, Smarting in lingering pickle.

Pike

Plums

Henry VI, II, 1:
CARDINAL: What, art thou lame?
SIMPCOX: Aye, God Almighty help me!
SUFFOLK: How camest thou so?
SIMPCOX: A fall off of a tree.
WIFE: A plum tree, master.
GLOUCESTER: How long hast thou been blind?
SIMPCOX: Oh, born so, master.
GLOUCESTER: What, and wouldst climb a tree? SIMPCOX: But that in all my life, when I was a youth.
WIFE: Too true, and bought his climbing very dear.
GLOUCESTER: Mass, thou lovedst plums well, that wouldst venture so.
SIMPCOX: Alas, good master, my wife desired some damsons, And made me climb, with danger of my life.

King John, II, 1:
CONSTANCE: Do, child, go to it grandam, child: Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: There's a good grandam.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, II, 2:
HAMLET: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Venus and Adonis, Stanza 86:
'Fair queen,' quoth he, 'if any love you owe me, Measure my strangeness with my unripe years: Before I know myself, seek not to know me; No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears: The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or being early pluck'd is sour to taste.

The Passionate Pilgrim, Stanza 10:
Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded, Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring! Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded! Fair creature, kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting! Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree, And falls, through wind, before the fall should be.

Pomegranate

Romeo and Juliet, III, 5:
JULIET Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Poppy

Pork

LAUNCELOT: Truly, the more to blame he: we were Christians enow before; e'en as many as could well live, one by another. This making Christians will raise the price of hogs: if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. (III, 5)

JESSICA: Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo: Launcelot and I are out. He tells me flatly, there is no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew's daughter: and he says, you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork. (III, 5)

Potato
(sweet potato only--no white potatoes in England then)

The Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 5:
FALSTAFF: My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

Prunes

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 1:
SLENDER: I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised my shin th' other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence; three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes; and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs bark so? be there bears i' the town?

Measure for Measure, II, 1:
POMPEY: Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour's reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit-dish, a dish of some three-pence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes,--
ESCALUS: Go to, go to. No matter for the dish, sir.
POMPEY: No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right: but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, Master Froth, I could not give you three-pence again.
ESCALUS: No indeed.
POMPEY: Very well: you being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes,--

The Winter's Tale, IV, 3:
CLOWN: ...I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?--none, that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun.