We may quote, as a further illustration, the following stanza from Browne’s “Pastorals” (bk. ii. song 3):
“The peascod greene, oft with no little toyle,
He’d seek for in the fattest, fertil’st soile,
And rende it from the stalke to bring it to her,
And in her bosom for acceptance wooe her.”[542]
Plantain. The leaves of this plant were carefully valued by our forefathers for their supposed efficacy in healing wounds, etc. It was also considered as a preventive of poison; and to this supposed virtue we find an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 2):
“Benvolio. Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.
Benvolio. For what, I pray thee?
Romeo. For your broken shin.”[543]
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (i. 2) Palamon says:
“These poor slight sores
Need not a plantain.”
Poppy. The plant referred to by Shakespeare in “Othello” (iii. 3) is the opium poppy, well known in his day for its deadly qualities. It is described by Spenser in the “Fairy Queen” (ii. 7, 52) as the “dead-sleeping poppy,” and Drayton (“Nymphidia,” v.) enumerates it among the flowers that procure “deadly sleeping.”