In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this venomous plant, as “also when following their mortal brutal trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures.”[454] Numerous instances are on record of fatal results through persons eating this plant. In the “Philosophical Transactions” (1732, vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to animals.
Anemone. This favorite flower of early spring is probably alluded to in the following passage of “Venus and Adonis:”
“By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d
Was melted like a vapour from her sight;
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.”
According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears that Venus wept over the body of Adonis:
“Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around;
From every drop that falls upon the ground
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,
And where a tear has dropp’d a wind-flower blows.”
Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Mr. Ellacombe[455] says that although Shakespeare does not actually name the anemone, yet the evidence is in favor of this plant. The “purple color,” he adds, is no objection, for purple in Shakespeare’s time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as “purpureus” had in Latin.[456]
Apple. Although Shakespeare has so frequently introduced the apple into his plays, yet he has abstained from alluding to the extensive folk-lore associated with this favorite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning some of the popular nicknames by which the apple was known in his day, little is said about it. The term apple was not originally confined to the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied to any fruit, as we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, etc.[457] So when Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention of Eve’s apple, he simply means that it was some fruit that grew in Eden:
“How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.”
(a) The “apple-John,” called in France deux-années or deux-ans, because it will keep two years, and considered to be in perfection when shrivelled and withered,[458] is evidently spoken of in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), where Falstaff says: “My skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John.” In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) there is a further allusion:
“1st Drawer. What the devil hast thou brought there? apple-Johns? thou know’st Sir John cannot endure an apple-John.