_2nd Henry IV_, act i, sc. 2 (16).

(4) _Ditto._

They called him Mandrake.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 2 (338).

(5) _Suffolk._

Would curses kill, as doth the Mandrake's groan.

_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (310).

(6) _Juliet._

And shrieks like Mandrakes' torn out of the earth
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 3 (47).

There is, perhaps, no plant on which so many books and treatises
(containing for the most part much sad nonsense) have been written as
the Mandrake, and there is certainly no plant round which so much
superstition has gathered, all of which is more or less silly and
foolish, and a great deal that is worse than silly. This, no doubt,
arose from its first mention in connection with Leah and Rachel, and
then in the Canticles, which, perhaps, shows that even in those days
some strange qualities were attributed to the plant; but how from that
beginning such, and such wide-spread, superstitions could have arisen,
it is hard to say. I can scarcely tell these superstitious fables in
better words than Gerard described them: "There hath been many
ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or some
runagate surgeons or physicke-mongers I know not. . . . They adde that
it is never or very seldome to be found growing naturally but under a
gallowes, where the matter that has fallen from a dead body hath given
it the shape of a man, and the matter of a woman the substance of a
female plant, with many other such doltish dreams. They fable further
and affirme that he who would take up a plant thereof must tie a dog
thereunto to pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging
up, otherwise, if a man should do it, he should surely die in a short
space after." This, with the addition that the plant is decidedly
narcotic, will sufficiently explain all Shakespeare's references.
Gerard, however, omits to notice one thing which, in justice to our
forefathers, should not be omitted. These fables on the Mandrake are by
no means English mediaeval fables, but they were of foreign extraction,
and of very ancient date. Josephus tells the same story as held by the
Jews in his time and before his time. Columella even spoke of the plant
as "semi-homo;" and Pythagoras called it "Anthropomorphu