elp, who says it meanes "faire without and foule within," but it
probably alludes to its gaudy colour and worthlessness. But these names
are scarcely the common names of the plant, but rather nicknames; the
usual name is, and always has been, Poppy, which is an easily traced
corruption from the Latin _papaver_, the Saxon and Early English names
being variously spelt, _popig_ and _papig_, _popi_ and _papy_; so that
the Poppy is another instance of a very common and conspicuous English
plant known only or chiefly by its Latin name Anglicised.

Our common English Poppy, "being of a beautiful and gallant red colour,"
is certainly one of the handsomest of our wild flowers, and a Wheat
field with a rich undergrowth of scarlet Poppies is a sight very dear to
the artist,[223:1] while the weed is not supposed to do much harm to the
farmer. But this is not the Poppy mentioned by Iago, for its narcotic
qualities are very small; the Poppy that he alludes to is the Opium
Poppy (_P. somniferum_). This Poppy was well known and cultivated in
England long before Shakespeare's day, but only as a garden ornament;
the Opium was then, as now, imported from the East. Its deadly qualities
were well known. Gower describes it--

"There is growend upon the ground
Popy that bereth the sede of slepe."

_Conf. Aman._, lib. quint. (2, 102 Paulli).

Spenser speaks of the plant as the "dull Poppy," and describing the
Garden of Proserpina, he says--

"There mournful Cypress grew in greatest store,
And trees of bitter gall, and Heben sad,
Dead-sleeping Poppy, and black Hellebore,
Cold Coloquintida."

_F. Q._, ii, 7, 52.

And Drayton similarly describes it--

"Here Henbane, Poppy, Hemlock here,
Procuring deadly sleeping."

_Nymphal_ v.

The name of opium does not seem to have been in general use, except
among the apothecaries. Chaucer, however, uses it--

"A claire made of a certayn wyn,
With necotykes, and opye of Thebes fyn."

_The Knightes Tale._

And so does Milton--

"Which no cooling herb
Or medicinal liquor can asswage,
Nor breath of vernal air from Snowy Alp;
Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er
To death's benumming opium as my only cure."