The sea – ‘central’ in Shakespeare’s work?

‘The sea itself in its varied working tides, waves, currents, storms and calms, never goes out of [Shakespeare’s] work’, as Falconer rather poetically observes.1 It is true that in every single play – as far away as it may be situated from the sea2 – there is at least one metaphor or phrase about the sea or the ships navigating it.

Many authors have commented on the frequent use of ‘sea phrases’ before: a ‘ubiquity of the sea in Shakespeare’s work’.3 Yet biographical deductions should not be drawn from this fact, and similarly it would, in my opinion, be a stretch to conclude that Shakespeare ‘loved the sea’. From comments along these lines, the projection from romanticism’ jumps right out of it in my viewpoint.

Döring has made the important argument, that ‘Elizabethan playhouses in Southwark were waterway constructions, built on … the river’s edge’.4 So, Shakespeare worked in the harbour area of London. To put it
differently, he was situated in the ‘maritime centre’ of a ‘maritime city’,5 that was the capital of a ‘maritime country’. How could his language not be teeming with references to the sea?

However, when a ‘centrality of maritime experience in and for Shakespearean theatre’6 is postulated, I have to object with all due respect. I cannot prove it with numbers, but the many mentions of flowers, trees, herbs and other plants appear to me at least as frequent as the sea and ship references.

As a witness in this case, I call Caroline Spurgeon, who did all the counts. She presents some charts in the end of her book, ‘showing the range and subjects of images in five of Shakespeare’s plays’ (Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, As You Like It, Macbeth and A Winter’s Tale), and ‘showing the range and subjects of Shakespeare’s images in their exact proportion’,7 which I reproduce in my book with kind permission of the publisher.

From these charts it can be recognised, that the sea is not more ‘central’ for Shakespeare’s work than many
other things. Other authors found Shakespeare ‘very much aware of gardening, its joys and disappointments’ of gardening, for instance.8
But even if not ‘central’, the sea remains important in the plays.

  1. Falconer, 1964, Shakespeare and the Sea, p. xii. ↩︎
  2. Mentz, 2009, At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean, loc. 98.
    ‘The sea … inspired a rich symbolic language even in plays set on terra firma.’ ↩︎
  3. G.W. Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest, 1932, quoted in Brayton, 2018, Shakespeare’s Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration, p. 12. My emphasis. ↩︎
  4. Döring, 2012, All the World’s the Sea: Shakespearean Passages, p. 11
    (in DSG Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Band 148). ↩︎
  5. Sprang, 2012, “So Weak Is My Ability and Knowledge in Navigation”: Navigating the Stage in Early Modern London, p. 33 (in DSG Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Band 148):
    ‘galleys and large convoy vessels sailing up and down the Thames, and sea captains, pilots and sailors walking the streets of London’. ↩︎
  6. Ibid., p. 12, my emphasis. ↩︎
  7. Spurgeon, 2001, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us, Annex [Reprint from 1935]. ↩︎
  8. Christ, 2002, Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: A User-Friendly Introduction, p. 140. ↩︎

Shakespeare’s Potions, Poisons and Medicines

The plays provide us with many potions and concoctions with fantastic effects and with sensational medical feats like the reviving of Thaisa with ‘rough and woeful music’ and drug from a ‘vial’19 (Pericles 3.2).

A ‘leprous distilment’ made from a ‘juice of hebona’ (Ham 1.5.64, 62) was used to kill old Hamlet, and Laertes intends to kill the prince with an ‘unction of a mountebank’ on his sword tip (Ham 4.4.140).
The speech of the ghost is an alltime favourite of mine:

… thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth possess
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood.
(Ham 1.5.61-70, my emphasis)

There is no clear identification of this hebona, but the speech is great. In Cymbeline there is much confusion about the ‘cordial’ given to Imogen. The queen had requested a deadly poison, but the doctor, knowing her, provided only a sleeping draught.

Regarding therapeutic formulations, I wish that modern pharmacology could create such exactly predictable effects as the ‘distilling liquor’ in Romeo and Juliet, which induces a sleep or apparent death for not more and not less that forty-two hours.

The ‘prescriptions of rare and proved effects’ in All’s Well That Ends Well, which cure the king so fast from his enigmatic affliction, leave the modern doctor full of envy, too.

But there is much more. Only mentioned, but not essential for the plot, are:

  • ‘poppy, mandragora, or all the drowsy syrups of the world’ in Othello (3.3.327),
  • ‘mandragora’ also in Antony and Cleopatra (1.5.3),
  • ‘an ounce of civet, to sweeten my imagination’ in King Lear (4.6.128),
  • the ‘insane root that takes the reason prisoner’ as well as ‘some sweet oblivious antidote’ in Macbeth (1.3.85-86, 5.3.43),
  • the ‘poisonous compounds, movers of a languishing death’ and the ‘mortal minerals’ in Cymbeline (1.5.8, 5.5.50) and finally
  • the ‘sleepy drinks’ and ‘tincture’ in The Winter’s Tale (1.1.12, 3.2.202).

There is a medical situation in Macbeth 5.3 that I, as an MD, find utterly funny, although the circumstances themselves are rather bleak. The queen has gone mad, and the king’s enemies are closing in around. Macbeth requests a report from the doctor, whose statement (“Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies That keep her from her rest,” Mac 5.3.37–39) is essentially doctor-speak for “She is beyond my help!”
Nevertheless, it only elicits a brisk command from the king: “Cure her of that.” I can so vividly imagine what the doctor might have been thinking in that moment.

All this (including Shakespeare’s description of first aid measures, remember e.g. Lear’s requesting a looking glass for his respiration check on Cordelia, KL 5.3.235) gave me the idea for a second book, which could have been titled Shakespeare’s Potions, Poisons, and Medicines.

I collected a multitude of references, but eventually decided not to pursue it. On the topic of shipwrecks, there was relatively little to be found in the literature. On Shakespeare and medicine, however, there are already so many publications that almost everything has already been said, and I felt unable to contribute anything substantially new. Consider the following list of books and articles:

  • Bucknill, J.C. (1860) The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare. London: Longman.
  • Chesney, J.P. (1884) Shakespeare As A Physician: J.H. Chambers.
  • Davis, F.M. (2000) ‘Shakespeare’s Medical Knowledge: How did he acquire it?’ The Oxfordian, Volume III, pp. 45–58.
  • Doran, A. (2003) ‘Shakespeare And The Medical Society’, BMJ : British Medical Journal (1), pp. 1201–1205.
  • Epstein, H.B. (1932) William Shakespeare, M. D.: Lasky company, inc.
  • Field, R.B. (1885) The Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare. Easton, PA: Andrews & Clifton.
  • Fu, K.T.L. (1998) ‘The healing hand in literature: Shakespeare and surgery’, Hong Kong Medical Journal = Xianggang Yi Xue Za Zhi, 4(1), pp. 77–88.
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 1. Shakespeare’s physicians’, The Medical Journal of Australia, 2(7), pp. 338–344.
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 2. Mental illness’, The Medical Journal of Australia, 2(8), pp. 399–405.
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 3. Venereal disease — “the pox”’, The Medical journal of Australia, 2(9), pp. 445–449.
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 4. Drugs, herbs and poisons’, The Medical Journal of Australia, 2(10), pp. 515–519.
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 5. Disease: its causes, diagnosis and cure’, The Medical journal of Australia, 2(11),
  • Kail, A.C. (1983) ‘The bard and the body. 6. Therapeutics’, The Medical Journal of Australia, 2(12), pp. 657–662.
  • Kail, A.C. (1990) ‘The doctors in Shakespeare’s plays. Part One’, Australian Family Physician, 19(2), pp. 211–214.
  • Kail, A.C. (1990) ‘The doctors in Shakespeare’s plays. Part two’, Australian Family Physician, 19(3), 372-3, 376-8.
  • Kail, A.C. (1986) The medical mind of Shakespeare. Balgowlah: Williams & Wilkins (this book conclomerated most of the materials presented in the ‘The bard and the body’-Series).
  • Moyes, J. (1896) Medicine & Kindred Arts in the Plays of Shakespeare: MacLehose.
  • Peterson, K.L. (2004) ‘Shakespearean Revivifications: Early Modern Undead’, Shakespeare Studies, 32(240-266).
  • Peterson, K.L. (2006) ‘Historica Passio : Early Modern Medicine, King Lear, and Editorial Practice’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 57(1), pp. 1–22.
  • Peterson, K.L. (2016) Popular medicine, hysterical disease, and social controversy in Shakespeare’s England. (Literary and scientific cultures of early modernity). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
  • Sahasranam, K. (2017) ‘Random Thoughts on William Shakespeare and Medicine.’, BMH Medical Journal, 4(1), pp. 3–5.
  • Simpson, R.R. (1959) Shakespeare and Medicine. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone.
  • Smith F (1914) ‘Shakespeare on Syphilis’, BMJ Military Health (22), p. 450.
  • Stearns, C.W. (1865) Shakespeare’s medical knowledge. New York: D. Appleton and Co.
  • Vest, W.E. (1950) ‘Shakespeare’s knowledge of chest diseases’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 144(15), pp. 1232–1234.
  • Wainwright, J.W. (1915) The Medical And Surgical Knowledge Of William Shakespeare: With Explanatory Notes (1915).

Some of these works are so idolatrous that they attribute full medical knowledge to the playwright in the same way as ‘Shakespeare’s knowledge of nautical terms, ship-handling, marine animals, winds, and tides’ has been read as proof for ‘time spent at sea.’

Doing so, all these authors ‘just underestimate Shakespeare’s genius for words and language … [and] undervalue [his] ability to imagine the world and make it palpable’. He simply was a spongue for words and very apt in playing with those words afterwards. That is how he also ‘mastered the terminology and technical features of swordplay, horsemanship, shoemaking, herbology and the language and manners of the court.’1

  1. Brayton, 2018, Shakespeare’s Ocean, p. 199. ↩︎