“Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!”
Again, the contagiousness of pestilence is thus alluded to by Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1): “O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.” The belief, too, that the poison of pestilence dwells in the air, is spoken of in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3):
“When Jove
Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air.”
And, again, in “Richard II.” (i. 3):
“Devouring pestilence hangs in our air.”
It is alluded to, also, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 1), where the Duke says:
“O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.”
While on this subject, we may quote the following dialogue from the same play (ii. 3), which, as Dr. Bucknill[610] remarks, “involves the idea that contagion is bound up with something appealing to the sense of smell, a mellifluous voice being miscalled contagious; unless one could apply one organ to the functions of another, and thus admit contagion, not through its usual portal, the nose:”
“Sir Andrew. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.
Sir Toby. A contagious breath.