pose that Shakespeare was indebted to any one for
what must have been a familiar element in all incantations at a time
when a belief in witchcraft was common." Percy ("Reliques," vol. iii.
bk. 2) quotes a receipt by the celebrated astrologer, Dr. Dee, for "an
ungent to anoynt under the eyelids, and upon the eyelids eveninge and
morninge, but especially when you call," that is, upon the fairies. It
consisted of a decoction of various flowers.

[526] Notes to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877. Preface, p. xx.

_Mandragora_ or _Mandrake_. No plant, perhaps, has had, at different
times, a greater share of folk-lore attributed to it than the mandrake;
partly owing, probably, to the fancied resemblance of its root to the
human figure, and the accidental circumstance of _man_ being the first
syllable of the word. An inferior degree of animal life was assigned to
it; and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the ground, it
uttered groans of so pernicious a character, that the person who
committed the violence either went mad or died. In "2 Henry VI." (iii.
2) Suffolk says:

"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent," etc.

And Juliet ("Romeo and Juliet," iv. 3) speaks of

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

To escape this danger, it was recommended to tie one end of a string to
the plant and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan would
discharge its whole malignity. The ancients, it appears, were equally
superstitious with regard to this mysterious plant, and Columella, in
his directions for the site of gardens, says they may be formed where

"the mandrake's flowers
Produce, whose root shows half a man, whose juice
With madness strikes."

Pliny[527] informs us that those who dug up this plant paid particular
attention to stand so that the wind was at their back; and, before they
began to dig, they made three circles round the plant with the point of
the sword, and then, proceeding to the west, commenced digging it up. It
seems to have been well known as an opiate in the time of Shakespeare,
who makes Iago say in "Othello" (iii. 3):

"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday."

[527] "Natural History," bk. xxv. chap. 94.

In "Antony and C