CHAPTER II. SHAKESPEARE.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Thompson, C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel)
Their several virtues, and effects.
“Cornelius.
Your highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart:
Besides, the seeing these effects will be
Both noisome and infectious.
“Queen.
Oh content thee.
Enter Pisanio.
(aside) Here comes a flattering rascal; upon him
Will I first work: he’s for his master,
And enemy to my son. How now, Pisanio?
Doctor, your service for this time is ended;
Take your own way.
“Cornelius.
(aside) I do suspect you, madam,
But you shall do no harm.
I do not like her. She doth think she has
Strange lingering poisons. I do not know her spirit,
And will not trust one of her malice with
A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has
Will stupify and dull the sense a while:
Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs,
Then afterwards up higher, but there is
No danger in what show of death it makes,
More than the locking up the spirits a time
To be more fresh reviving. She is fool’d
With a most false effect; and I the truer
So to be false with her.”[12]
The caution of the physician is well described, and his resort to subterfuge in order to checkmate the evil design of his wily mistress and old pupil, whom he evidently distrusts.
The Queen is supposed to have possessed considerable knowledge and skill in the use of drugs, and her conserves had evidently a great reputation. Her scientific ideas were in advance of the age she lived in when she states her desire to make physiological experiments on animals to advance her knowledge; but the clear acumen of Cornelius saw through the apparently laudable spirit of research that imbued his pupil, and he supplied her with drugs of less potency.
The following allusions are made to the apothecary:—
“Cardinal Beaufort. Bid the apothecary Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.”[13]
And again, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cerimon says:—
“Your master will be dead ere you return; There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature, That can recover him. Give this to the apothecary, And tell me how it works.”[14]
This lord of Ephesus was evidently something of an amateur physician, as he tells us later that
“’Tis known I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o’er authorities, I have (Together with my practice) made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; And can speak of the disturbances that nature Works, and of the cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour”.
The lines—
“One whose subdu’d eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum,”[15]
spoken by Othello, refer to the manner in which many of the medicinal gums are collected in the East. Small slits or punctures are made in the bark of the tree, through which the semi-liquid gum slowly oozes. It then coagulates in the form of a tear, and is at length scraped off and collected.