The two most familiar pharmaceutical allusions in Shakespeare’s writings are the apothecary and his shop in “Romeo and Juliet” (Act V., Sc. 1), and the juice of cursed hebenon which Hamlet’s uncle poured into the ear of his father (“Hamlet,” Act I., Sc. 5). Some remarks on both these noted allusions are given separately. The medical knowledge of Shakespeare has been discussed by several eminent doctors, notably by Dr. J. C. Bucknill, of Exeter, who published a very interesting work under that title in 1860, in which the writer almost went so far as to hint at the possibility that the great dramatist must have had some training in the medical science of the day before he took to the theatre business. A similar suggestion was made by Lord Campbell in regard to the poet’s legal knowledge.
Great interest in drugs and poisons was taken by the people generally in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and the medical controversies of the period filled a good many books. It is certain that Shakespeare at least skimmed a good many of these. “Galen and Paracelsus” are mentioned in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (Act II., Sc. 3). In “Coriolanus” (Act II., Sc. 1) Menenius says of a letter from Coriolanus that it gives him an estate of seven years’ health, adding “the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutick, and,” compared with this letter, “of no better report than a horse-drench.”
Apothecaries are mentioned in “Henry VI” (Part II., Act III., Sc. 3), when Cardinal Beaufort, delirious on his deathbed, cries, “Bid the apothecary bring the strong poison that I bought of him.” Also in “Pericles” (Act III., Sc. 2), the amateur physician Cerimon, a Lord of Ephesus, who had studied medicine, and “by turning o’er authorities” had made himself familiar with “the blest infusions that dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones,” gives a prescription to his servant, saying, “Give this to the ’pothecary, and tell me how it works.” Apothecaries’ weights are used as metaphors in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (Act II., Sc. 3) when Lafeu, who has given Parolles “most egregious indignity,” which the latter says he has not deserved, replies “Yes, good faith, every dram of it; and I will not bate thee a scruple,” and by Falstaff, who, in his interview with the Chief Justice, refers rather enigmatically to drams and scruples. Falstaff again, in “Merry Wives of Windsor,” is responsible for the simile of those who “smell like Bucklersbury in simple time.” The Dr. Caius in the same play, with his “by gar” and comical English, is assumed by some interpreters to have been a burlesque on Sir Theodore Mayerne, but except that Mayerne was French and certainly spoke English with a foreign accent, there is no reason for associating him with the character. Mayerne never acquired English. In one of his later letters he writes of Lady Cherosbury, for Shrewsbury. There was a very famous Dr. Caius, who had been physician to Queen Elizabeth, who founded Caius College, Cambridge, and who died in 1573, not so very long before this play was written. But it is agreed that he could not have been the original of the caricature.
Of the drugs and pharmaceutical preparations named by Shakespeare most would be familiar to anyone acquainted with the literature of the day. “Throw physick to the dogs,” says Macbeth to the physician who is telling him of the mental illness of Lady Macbeth. Then, his mind recurring to the war in which he was engaged, he demands of the doctor “What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug would scour these English hence?” (Act V., Sc. 3). In the same play (Act I., Sc. 3), Banquo asks when the witches vanish, “Have we eaten of the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?” There are many allusions in classical literature to herbs which destroyed the reason. In Plutarch’s life of Antony, for example, there is an account of some Roman soldiers in the Parthian war eating a root which deprived them of all memory, and it is said they occupied themselves in digging, and in hurling stones from one place to another. Among the ingredients of the witches’ cauldron (Act IV., Sc. 1), the animal substances named recall much of the pharmacy of the period, but only one vegetable drug, “root of hemlock, digg’d i’ the dark,” is named. Lady Macbeth (Act II., Sc. 2) tells how she has drugg’d the possets of Duncan’s grooms, so that “death and nature do contend about them Whether they live or die.” In Act V., Sc. 1, she complains that “all the perfumes of Arabia” will not sweeten her hand from the smell of blood. It is also in this play that the description of Edward the Confessor curing the King’s Evil (see Vol. I, p. 299) occurs.
In the “Comedy of Errors” (Act IV., Sc. 1) Dromio of Syracuse tells Antipholus of Ephesus that he has found a bark for him, put the freightage on board, and bought “the oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitae.” In Act V., Sc. 1, the Abbess declares that Antipholus having taken sanctuary in the Priory she will not let him stir, “Till I have used the approved means I have, with wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers, To make of him a formal man again.”
In “Much Ado about Nothing” (Act III., Sc. 4) Margaret recommends the love-sick Beatrice to “get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing for a qualm.” This drug was in great repute in Shakespeare’s time and was used for a multitude of complaints. Woodall says the distilled water of it “doth ease the pain of the head, conformeth the memory, cureth a quartane, provoketh sweat, and comforteth the vital spirits.” The Physician in “King Lear” (Act IV., Sc. 4), tells Cordelia there are “many simples operative whose power will close the eye of anguish.”
The story of “All’s Well that Ends Well” is based on a secret remedy for fistula which Helena had acquired from her deceased father, and with which she heals the King. The Queen in “Cymbeline” is an amateur pharmacist. In Act I., Sc. 6, she tells the doctor that he has taught her how “to make perfumes, distil, preserve”; and in Act V., Sc. 5, the doctor tells the King that on her deathbed she confessed she had “a mortal mineral” which would “by inches waste you.”
In the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Act III., Sc. 1), a fairy named Cobweb gives Bottom the opportunity of alluding to the usefulness of cobwebs for cut fingers. “In Twelfth Night” Sir Toby Belch jocularly addresses Maria as “My nettle of India” (Act II., Sc. 5), probably Indian hemp. We read of “parmaceti,” “the sovereign’st thing on earth for an inward bruise,” and also of the “villainous saltpetre” in Act I., Sc. 3, of “Henry IV.” Part I.; in the second part (Act I., Sc. 2) there is an allusion to the fashion of diagnosis by the examination of a person’s water; and in Act IV., Sc. 4, we find mention of the deadly character of aconitum, and in the same scene of gold “preserving life in medicine potable.” In “Antony and Cleopatra,” the Queen greets Antony’s messenger with the remark that though so much unlike him yet that “coming from him, that great medicine hath with his tinct gilded thee” (Act I., Sc. 5), evidently an allusion to the tincture of gold. Another reference to potable gold is found in “All’s Well that Ends Well.”
The plantain for a broken shin is called for by Costard in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (“plantain, a plain plantain; no salve, sir, but a plantain,” Act III., Sc. 1); plantain leaf for a broken shin is also recommended by Romeo (Act I., Sc. 2). In the same scene occur the words so dear to homeopaths: “One fire burns out another’s burning.” In “King John” (Act V., Sc. 2,) revolt is likened to a plaster which will heal “inveterate canker of the wound by making many.”
In “Henry VI.,” part II. (Act V., Sc. 1) York quotes the legend of Achilles’ spear “able to kill or cure”; while in “Hamlet” (Act IV., Sc. 7) Laertes declares that he will anoint his sword with unction bought of a mountebank;
The action of drugs as charms is much in evidence in “Othello.” The father of Desdemona accuses the Moor of having
And again Brabantio tells the Duke that Desdemona has been stolen from him
These allusions all occur in scenes 2 and 3 of the first Act; in the latter also Iago promises Roderigo that Desdemona shall soon be to Othello “bitter as coloquintida.” At the end of this play Othello describes his “subdued eyes dropping tears as fast as the Arabian trees their medicinal gum.”
Autolycus refers to aqua vitæ as a restorative in the “Winter’s Tale” (Act IV., Sc. 3), as does the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” when she finds her mistress dead (Act IV., Sc. 5). The “popinjay” takes snuff in “Henry IV.” (part I., Act I., Sc. 3), Cleopatra calls for mandragora to drink “that I might sleep out this great gap of time my Antony is away” (“Ant. and Cleop.,” Act I., Sc. 5). “Not poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,” said Iago, shall medicine Othello against the poison he has given him (“Othello,” Act III., Sc. 3). “Sleepy drinks” are mentioned in the “Winter’s Tale,” (Act I., Sc. 1), and in the same play (“Winter’s Tale,” Act II., Sc. 1) Shakespeare uses the word “land-damn,” which some of his commentators have been disposed to identify with laudanum. The King of Sicily grossly insults his wife, Hermione, declaring her to be an adultress, Antigonus warmly defends her and assures the King that he has been “abused by some putters-on who will be damn’d for’t,” and he adds,
The idea is that this may be a misprint for laudanum, meaning, “I would poison him.” It must be added that this explanation does not find much favour, and perhaps it is rather far-fetched. It is mentioned by Stevens as having been proposed by Dr. Farmer, but Furness thinks that Stevens was poking fun at the solemn nonsense of his learned friend. But the other interpretations are not much better. There is, it appears, an old dialect word “lan-dan” which meant following a man with kettles and other rough music. Another suggested meaning is an association with an old Saxon word (hland) for urine, conveying the notion that the villain is to be made ill by a suppression of urine. Both these explanations seem ludicrously insufficient to express the anger of the speaker. Damn him up with land, that is, bury him alive, is gruesome enough, but this is an obscure way of expressing the proposal. Johnson disposes of the term by the theory that it was “a word which caprice brought into fashion, and reason and grammar drove irrevocably away. It has also been assumed, and this looks likely, that the punctuation has got misplaced and that the sentence should read “I would—Lord damn him.”
Shakespeare’s favourite daughter Susannah was married to Dr. John Hall, and it is possible that the doctor and his wife lived with the poet in his later years at Stratford. Dr. Hall was a practitioner of some eminence, and wrote a book in Latin (translated into English in 1657 by James Cook) entitled “Select Observations ... Cures Empirical and Historical on Very Eminent Persons in Desperate Disorders.” The following, which is Observation 60, is worth quoting for the picture it gives of pharmacy in the Elizabethan age.
“Talbot, the first born of the Countess of Salisbury, aged about one year, being miserably afflicted with a fever and worms, so that death was only expected, was thus cured. There was first injected a clyster of milk and sugar. This gave two stools and brought away four worms. By the mouth was given hartshorn burnt, prepared in the form of a julep. To the pulse was applied Ung Populeon ʒii mixed with spiders’ webs, and a little powder of nutshells. It was put to one pulse of one wrist one day, to the other the next. To the stomach was applied mithridate; to the bowel the emplaster against worms. And thus he became well in three days, for which the Countess returned me many thanks and gave me great reward.”
is a favourite illustration of the scrupulous care which Shakespeare bestowed on the revision of his dramas. The story on which the play is founded is well known to students. It was written by an Italian novelist, Luigi da Porto, of Vicenza, and was entitled “La Giuletta.” This author died in 1529. In Girolamo de la Corte’s “History of Verona,” published at Venice in 1549, it is given and stated to be a true story. An English translation of it in rhyme by Arthur Brooke appeared in 1562, and a prose translation by Painter some time later. The version by Brooke is entitled “The Tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliet,” and it is from this that Shakespeare took not only the incidents, but, as will be seen, some of his expressions. Brooke describes Romeus in Mantua, resolved to die, and looking for a shop where he may buy poison.
This is the rendering of the scene from Shakespeare’s first quarto edition, 1597:
Shakespeare was a busy man in 1597, and in the years before as well as about that date he was preparing novelties for his theatre. Later he had more leisure, and it is interesting to notice how artistically he fills out his original sketch with only just such details as make the ideas more vivid. In the revised version of this scene, published in 1609, there are no new ideas, but scarcely a line is left untouched. A comparison of title-pages in the two editions is amusing and at the same time instructive. In 1597 it reads: “An Excellent Conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely.” In 1609 this is toned down to “The most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been sundri times publiquely Acted.” The omission of the parenthetic (“with great applause”) is significant. The poet knows he no longer needs meretricious advertisement. The scene as we have it in our modern books is very similar to
The Apothecary.
(Drawn by Miss K. Righton.)
Two lines in the accepted version have been the subject of much controversy, sometimes of an acrimonious character among critics. Both sides quote one or other of the early editions in support of their contentions. One of the lines is “Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes.” It is fiercely held that “starveth” in this expression should be “stareth.” And in the famous line “I pray thy poverty and not thy will” ordinary readers naturally think “pay” should be substituted for “pray.” The defenders of the quoted versions contemptuously reply that it is because we are only commonsense people and not poets that we cannot rise to the height of appreciating the meaning of the more recondite phrases that makes us suggest the emendations.
The “juice of cursed Hebenon,” which according to the Ghost, was the poison chosen by Hamlet’s wicked uncle to kill his father by dropping some of it into his ears during his afternoon nap, has been much discussed by commentators. Authorities generally favour either henbane or ebony (hebenus). Some occasional opinions may be found suggesting other poisons, but they do not carry much weight. Dr. Paris, for example, in “Pharmacologia” proposes the essential oil of tobacco, quoting in support of his opinion the authority of Gerard, who says it was “commonly called the henbane of Peru.” Dr. Bucknill remarks that the poet could not have meant henbane because that herb is not a virulent poison, and would not have had the effect attributed to it. But no dramatist would care to have his fancies subjected to the test of science in this way. Possibly Shakespeare would hardly have cared to justify the introduction of the ghost by strict evidence. Dr. Bucknill decides that as no poison will fit the description the term was used as a generic one for a drug producing “hebetudo animi.” In Beisley’s “Shakespeare’s Garden” it is suggested that hebenon may have been a misprint for eneron, nightshade, which Dyce, a prominent authority, politely dismisses as a “villainous conjecture.”
A plausible German interpretation of hebenon is that it is derived from Eibenbaum, the yew-tree. Eibe was the Saxon name for the yew, and its poisonous properties were recognised from very ancient times. It is probable that some of the quotations which have been credited to ebony may have been really due to the yew. Spenser, for example, writes: “Lay now thy Heben bow aside”; “A speare of Heben wood” and “trees of bitter gall and Heben sad.” These references are more likely to be to the yew than to the ebony: and certainly could not have been applied to the henbane weeds. Gower (1390) has “Of hebanus the sleepy tree.” In Marlowe’s “Jew of Malta” (1592, contemporary with Shakespeare), several deadly things are grouped thus:—
There is no tradition of poisonous properties associated with ebony, as there is with both henbane and yew, but in regard to henbane, a remarkable passage has been found in Holland’s translation of Pliny which was published in London just about the time when Shakespeare was writing “Hamlet.” Pliny, dealing with henbane, says (in this translation): “An oile is made of the seed thereof which if it be but dropped into the eares is ynough to trouble the braine.” Shakespeare must have been a voracious reader, he probably got Holland’s book as soon as it came out, and finding this passage, adopted the suggestion. He was no doubt familiar with the word hebon or hebonus, and chose that for his verse, perhaps without caring very much whether it was a correct interpretation of henbane or not. As a matter of fact, in the earlier editions of “Hamlet” the word appears as hebona. In the folios, which came later, hebonon is substituted, no doubt out of consideration for euphony.
It is notable that the player who enacts the murder of the King (Act III., Sc. 2) describes the poison as a
This of course does not correspond with the suggestion that the juice of hebenon was the product of some one poisonous plant.