| Iago. | Not Poppy or Mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ownedst yesterday. | |
| Othello, act iii, sc. 3 (330). | ||
The Poppy had of old a few other names, such as Corn-rose and Cheese-bowls (a very old name for the flower), and being "of great beautie, although of evil smell, our gentlewomen doe call it Jone Silverpin." This name is difficult of explanation, even with Parkinson's help, 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."