Part 12

But law and the gospel in Shakespeare we find, And he gives the best physic for body and mind. GARRICK: Shakespeare’s Mulberry Tree.

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;

“No mortal that but dips a knife in it, Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratched withal.”

The action of drugs as charms is much in evidence in “Othello.” The father of Desdemona accuses the Moor of having

“Practised on her with foul charms, Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals That awaken motion.”

And again Brabantio tells the Duke that Desdemona has been stolen from him

“And corrupted By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks.”

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,

“Would I knew the villain, I would land-damn him.”

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.”

THE APOTHECARY IN “ROMEO AND JULIET”

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.

Brooke’s Version, 1562.

And then from street to street he wand’reth up and down To see if he in any place may find in all the town A salve meet for his sore, an oil fit for his wound, And seeking long, alas, too soon, the thing he sought he found, An apothecary sat unbusied at his door, Whom by his heavy countenance he guessed to be poor; And in his shop he saw his boxes were but few, And in his window of his wares there was so small a shew. Wherefore our Romeus assuredly hath thought What by no friendship could be got with money should be bought. For needy lack is like the poor man to compel To sell that which the city’s law forbiddeth him to sell. Then by the hand he drew the needy man apart And with the sight of glittering gold inflamed well his heart. “Take fifty crowns of gold (quoth he) I give them thee So that before I part from hence thou shalt deliver me Some poison strong that may in less than half an hour Kill him whose wretched hap shall be the poison to devour.” The wretch by covetisse is won and doth assent To sell the thing whose sale ere long too late he doth repent. In haste he poison sought and closely he it bound And then began in whisp’ring voice thus in his ear to round: “Fair Sir (quoth he), be sure this is the speeding gear, And more there is than you shall need; for half of that is there Will serve, I undertake, in less than half an hour To kill the strongest man alive. Such is the poison’s power.”

Shakespeare’s First Rendering.

This is the rendering of the scene from Shakespeare’s first quarto edition, 1597: