“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.”
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 5), the queen pathetically says:
“Give me to drink mandragora.
Char.Why, madam?