226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes 

 and used them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the 

 hoariness on the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as 

 in the king, and beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural 

 objects, however, the poet is not the original observer. He often 

 uses current opinions, fancies, dreams, for these also were the reali- 

 ties in his day, quite as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There 

 is concerning plants a sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of 

 years have sometimes contributed to the reputation born by a single 

 species. A curious illustration is found in what Shakespeare has 

 to say about the mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5) : 



" Give me to drink mandragora. 



Why, madam? 

 That I might sleep out this great gap of time." 



Othello, iii, 3 : 



" Not poppy, nor mandragora, 

 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 

 Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 

 Which thou owedst yesterday." 



Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of 

 the Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3) : 



" Alack, alack ! is it not like that I, 

 So early waking, what with loathsome smells, 

 And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth, 

 That living mortals, hearing them, run mad : 

 Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, 

 Environed with all these hideous fears ? " 



The mandrake Atropa officinalis belongs to the Solanacece, and, 

 like others of the family, has narcotic properties. This was doubt- 

 less known to Shakespeare, as in the passage cited he compares the 

 mandrake with the poppy. The groaning and shrieking are, of 

 course, the purest superstition. The root of the mandrake was sup- 

 posed to resemble the human form. The favorite habitat assigned 

 to the plant was the foot of the gallows, and men believed that in 

 some way the bodies of criminals were reproduced in the growing 

 plant; their very pains and cries renewed, especially for him who 

 profanely dared to pull the mandrake from the earth. The curious 

 may consult Gerarde. 



These ideas, it is needless to say, are very old; Pliny refers to 

 them, and, if I recollect well, Vergil has his hero pull up some 

 plant amid the strangest of sights and sounds. With these old 

 myths are tied up, perchance, the mandrakes of King James's ver- 

 sion. Nay, the superstition still survives; look at the woodcut in 



