February 3 2006
Who doesn’t like a good double entendre?
Dating to Shakespeare and the epilogue for As You Like It, Rosalind says, "If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ‘tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they use good bushes, and good playes prove the better by the help of a good epilogue."
The proverb means that good wine needs no advertising and goes back to Roman times. According to Endell Fritz in his 1916 book, Old Tavern Signs, in times when only a few people could read, a sign told travelers where goods could be purchased. Ancient tavern signs were a bush or a garland of ivy to indicate drink (wine) and a checkered board for food.
Historians indicate that the wine signs were in the form of ivy or holly wreaths, or a tangle of evergreen branches. Ivy and/or bush likey derived from Bacchus, the God of Wine, who wore a crown of ivy.
Cheers to good bush and good wine.
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