conditions. The fruits are particularly rich in monoterpenes and organic acids. Amino acids, sugars, and organic acids affect flavor. Due to their diuretic and astringent effects, the fruits have been used in traditional medicine. In 1984 and 1985, the following values were given for homogenized fruit: Fructose content increases steadily during fruit development, whereas sucrose content increases for 4 months and decreases afterwards. Tannin content and fruit acid content, especially ascorbid acid, decreases during fruit development. In ripe fruit, glutamate and aspartate were the major amino compounds, but also total amino acid composition changed during fruit development. In literature Chaucer A fruit which is rotten before it is ripe, the medlar is used figuratively in literature as a symbol of prostitution or premature destitution. For example, in the Prologue to The Reeve's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer's character laments his old age, comparing himself to the medlar, which he names using the Old English term for the fruit, "open-arse": Shakespeare In William Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Apemantus forces an apple upon Timon: "The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends. When thou wast in thy gilt and perfume, they mock'd thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags thou know'st none, but art despised for the contrary. There's a medlar for thee; eat it", perhaps including a pun on "meddler", one who meddles in affairs, as well as on rottenness. (IV.iii.300–305). In Measure for Measure, Lucio excuses his denial of past fornication because "they would else have married me to the rotten medlar." (IV.iii.171). In As You Like It, Rosalind makes a complicated pun involving grafting her interlocutor with the trees around her which bear love letters and with a medlar: "I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i' th' country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar." (III.ii.116–119). The most famous reference to medlars, often bowdlerized until modern editions accepted it, appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio laughs at Romeo's unrequited love for his mistress Rosaline (II, 1, 34–38): In the 16th and 17th centuries, medlars were bawdily called "open-arses" because of the shape of the fruits, inspiring boisterous or humorously indecent puns in many Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. The name survived in common use well into the 20th century.