3 H SHAKESPEARE'S [TOADSTOOL. 



Toadstool. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, ii. I, 22. 



OF MUSHROOMS OR TOAD-STOOLS. 



SOME mushrooms grow forth of the earth ; other upon 

 the bodies of old trees. Many wantons that dwell near 

 the sea, and have fish at will, are very desirous for change 

 of diet to feed upon the birds of the mountains ; and such 

 as dwell upon the hills or champaign grounds do long after 

 sea-fish ; many that have plenty of both do hunger after 

 the earthy excrescences called mushrooms. The mushrooms 

 or Toadstools, which grow upon the trunks of old trees, 

 very much resembling Jew's- ear, do in continuance of time 

 grow unto the substance of wood, which the fowlers do call 

 touchwood. This kind of mushroom is full of poison. 

 With fuzz-balls, puck- fists and bull-fists in some places of 

 England they use to kill or smoulder their bees, when they 

 would drive the hives, and bereave the poor bees of their 

 meat, houses and lives ; these are also used in some places, 

 where neighbours dwell far asunder, to carry and reserve 

 fire from place to place. Poisonsome mushrooms groweth 

 where old rusty iron lieth, or rotten clouts, or near to 

 serpents' dens, or roots of trees that bring forth venomous 

 fruit. Divers come up in April, others grow later about 

 August. To conclude, few of them are good to be eaten, 

 and most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater ; 

 therefore I give my advice unto those that love such 

 strange and new-fangled meats to beware of licking honey 

 among thorns, lest the sweetness of the one do not counter- 

 vail the sharpness and pricking of the other. Fuzz-balls 

 are noway eaten ; the powder of them is fitly applied to 

 merigalls, kibed heels and such like. 



Gerard's " Herbal," s.v. 



Tobacco. 



[Though Shakespeare does not mention Tobacco, allusions 

 to it are very frequent in the other dramatists of his time.] 



OUR adulterate Nicotian or Tobacco, so called of the 

 Knight Sir Nicot that first brought it over, which is the 

 spirit's Incubus, that begets many ugly and deformed phan- 

 tasies in the brain, which being also hot and dry in the 



