<Articles>A Study of Medicinal and Poisonous Herbs in Shakespeare's Works
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
This paper attempts to investigate one aspect of medicine appearing in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets : medicinal and poisonous herbs. I examined all the plants from Onions' A Shakespeare Glossary, and Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon and selected those herbs having medical or poisonous properties. As a result, I have identified 62 medicinal or poisonous herbs in the entire collection of his plays and sonnets, while R.R. Simpson has identified only 36. The fact that Shakespeare used this number of herbs implies that the dramatist had a profound knowledge of such plants. It is no exaggeration to say that he was quite a herbalist. Moreover, he effectively uses them in his plays in various ways, not only for their medicinal qualities but also as symbols, metaphor, simile, analogy, irony and pun. Some are mentioned in connection with the properties they have or the folk beliefs they represent, while some are used for their wonderful colors to create beautiful backgrounds. In addition, it is very interesting to note that some words were coined by Shakespeare or used for the first time as compounds or in new meanings. Each of them is used in a very creative and original way in its context. The findings resulted from a detailed investigation of all of Shakespeare's plays and depict one important aspect of his unique style. This rich harvest of information will be invaluable in the greater theme, 'Shakespeare and medicine, ' which we hope to study further.
- 神戸市看護大学の論文
- 1999-03-31
著者
関連論文
- A Study of Neologisms in Shakespeare's Comedies and Tragedies
- A Study of Medical Allusions in Four of Shakespeare's Tragedies
- A Study of Changes in Japanese News Coverage in Newsweek
- A Study of Medicinal and Poisonous Herbs in Shakespeare's Works
- A Study of Neologisms in Shakespeare's Hamlet