146 SHAKESPEARE'S [HART. 



THE stag and hind feeling themselves poisoned with 

 some venomous weed among grass where they pasture go 

 by and by to the artichoke, and therewith cure themselves. 



Holland's Pliny, bk. viii. ch. xxvii. 



THIS creature of all diseases is not subject to the fever, 

 but he is good to cure it. 



Ibid., bk. ii. ch. xxxii. 



IF together with deer's blood, there be burnt the herb 

 Dragon, Bastard Marjoram, and Orchanet, in a fire made 

 with Lentisk wood, serpents will gather round together 

 into an heap ; take away the same blood and put into the 

 fire the root of Pyrethrum (Pellitory of Spain), they will 

 scatter asunder again. Ibid ^ bk xxviii> ch ix 



HARTS are deceived with music, for they so love that 

 harmony, that they forbear their food to follow it. They 

 live very long 2,112 years. The bones of young Harts 

 are applied for making of pipes, but if a young one be 

 pricked in his legs with cactus, his bones will never make 

 pipes. If men drink in pots wherein are wrought Harts' 

 horns, it will weaken all force of venom. The magicians 

 have also devised that if the fat of a dragon's heart be 

 bound up in the skin of a roe, with the nerves of a Hart, 

 it promiseth victory to him that beareth it on his shoulder, 

 and that if the teeth be so bound in a roe's skin, it 

 maketh one's lord, master, or all superior powers, exorable 

 and appeased towards their husbands and suitors. Orpheus, 

 in his Book of Stones, commandeth a husband to carry 

 about him a Hart's horn, if he will live in amity and con- 

 cord with his wife. 



Topsell, "Four-footed Beasts," pp. 101-5. 



THE young males which our fallow deer do bring forth 

 are commonly named according to their several ages; for 

 the first year it is a fawn, the second a pricket, the third 

 a sorrel, the fourth a sore, the fifth a buck of the first 

 head. In examining the condition of our red deer, I find 

 that the young male is called - in the first year a calf, in 

 the second a brocket, the third a spay, the fourth a stagon 

 or stag, the fifth a great stag, the sixth an Hart, and so 

 forth unto his death. And with him in degree of venery 



