492 
NATURE 
[FEBRUARY 22, 1917 
written Shakespeare’s plays, we might perhaps 
have expected even more under some of these 
heads, while we should have expected less under 
others. But it is just because Shakespeare is 
Shakespeare that we get so much under all. 
Nothing seems to escape his ‘‘bland and universal 
eye” or his world-embracing interest. 
Medicine, as all know, plays a large part in 
Shakespeare. He is acquainted with the “con- 
gregated College ”—i.e. the College of Physicians 
—brought into existence by Wolsey and Linacre 
only some fifty years before his own time. He 
was a contemporary of Harvey. His own son-in- 
law was a distinguished physician with a large 
In the realm of Zoology Shakespeare seems to 
have been specially interested in birds. Pic- 
turesque creatures, even if imaginary—the phoenix, 
the unicorn, the salamander, the basilisk, and 
the cockatrice—naturally find favour with him, as 
with all poets. Specially interesting and mas- 
terly is Sir William Thiselton-Dyer’s account of 
Shakespeare’s knowledge of Plants. If Shake- 
speare introduces a plant, he says, he does it 
“with faultless inspiration born of observation 
which no art can supply.” England has always 
possessed a traditional botany, and Shakespeare is 
here characteristic of England. If he used any 
book it was probably the “Niewe Herball” of 
FiG. 1.—An alchemist at work. 
“ce 
and “genteel” practice. It is interesting to be 
told that mental disease is handled by Shakespeare 
more skilfully than any other, though it will be 
no surprise to those who remember their Hamlet; 
but he shows also a large acquaintance with both 
maladies and remedies of very varied kinds. His 
love of technical terms anticipates that of Rud- 
yard Kipling himself. 
In Astronomy he was still dominated, it seems, 
by the Ptolemaic and he knew neither 
that of Copernicus nor that of Bacon, who had 
his own theory—which Mr. Knobel pronounces 
to be “mere futility.” Alchemy was much en- 
couraged -by Queen Elizabeth, but Shakespeare 
shows only a superficial acquaintance with it. 
NO. 2469, VoL. 98] 
system, 
By Pieter Breughel, 1558. 
do so yet more fully. 
From ‘‘ Shakespeare's England.” 
Henry Lyte of Lyte’s-Cary. But, as Canon Ella- 
combe points out, he is curiously distinct from his 
contemporaries in the use he makes of popular, 
not literary, botany. 
But there are two portions which all must read. 
Fortunately they come first, and are not likely to 
escape attention: Sir Walter Raleigh’s Preface 
on the Age of Elizabeth and the Poet Laureate’s 
noble prefatory Ode. 
“The age of Elizabeth, the most glorious and 
in some ways the most significant period of Eng- 
lish history,’? so Sir Walter Raleigh writes of it. 
What was it like? We of all men ought to 
understand it. Our hope is we may come to 
For it was the age of the 
