THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
Here’s flowers for you.— Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 
Away before me fo sweet beds of flowers. — Twelfth Night, i. 1. 
Hconttum. 
The united vessel of their blood, 
Mingled with venom of suggestion— 
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in — 
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong 
As Aconitum or rash gunpowder. 
2nd King Henry IV, iv. 4, 44. 
HERE is another place in which it is probable 
that Shakespeare alludes to the Aconite; he 
does not name it, but he compares the effects 
of the poison to gunpowder, as in the passage 
above. 
Let me have 
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear 
As will disperse itself through all the veins, 
That the life-weary taker may fall dead 
And that the trank may be discharged of breath 
As violently as hasty powder fired 
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb. 
Romeo andJuliet, v. 1, 59* 
B 
