If you poison us, do we not die?
The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1
Shylock, who speaks the words above, is right to be concerned about the lethality of poisons. In Shakespeare’s time highly toxic compounds were readily available, while effective medical treatment and antidotes were in very short supply. Poison was a terrifyingly easy way to kill someone and because forensic knowledge was almost non-existent there was a good chance of getting away with it.
Autopsies were carried out to look for signs of poisoning, but unless a corrosive substance was used there would have been few characteristic signs that sixteenth-century medical expertise could have recognised. There was, however, one sign that would have been considered powerful evidence at the time: ‘If they had swallow’d poison, ’twould appear / By external swelling’ (Antony and Cleopatra). It was an accepted fact at the time that poisons caused the body to swell, but this has since been proved entirely false. There must have been several examples where a body, swollen by natural decaying processes, was mistaken for a poison victim and this may well have led to some wrongful convictions.
There was such a poor understanding of how toxic substances interacted with the body that it also led to the extraordinary situation where the same substance could be sold as a cosmetic, a medicine and a poison. Mercury, lead and arsenic-based compounds were swallowed for their supposed health benefits and smeared on faces as make-up, without any apparent alarm being raised by customers. Even when the dangers and ill-effects were well known there was no regulation and little concern.
Many women, and probably actors playing women’s roles too, exposed themselves to damaging levels of heavy metals on a daily basis. The fashion of the day, set by Queen Elizabeth I, who was known to ‘pile on the paint’, was for very pale skin and red cheeks – ‘’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white / Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on’ (Twelfth Night). White lead, in a form known as ceruse, was used to cover the face for the perfect pale complexion. It corroded the skin but this only encouraged users to apply an extra layer to cover the blemishes; hair also fell out and gums receded, loosening the teeth. Mercury, in the form of cinnabar, a brilliant red pigment, was used as rouge. It could lead to memory loss, paranoia and a grey film on the teeth. Both mercury and lead damaged nerves, causing headaches, depression and the shakes. Casual, everyday, low-level poisoning seems to have been taken in the average Elizabethan’s stride. Rather than warning people off the use of these substances, fashions changed to accommodate the damage being done to the body – wigs and black teeth became all the rage.
Medicine was the other main route to unwittingly poison the general population. In an era when the aim of medical remedies was to restore the balance of the four humours (see Chapter 3), purgatives were in common use. White arsenic, or arsenic trioxide, with its powerful vomit-inducing properties, has therefore been used in medicine since as early as 2000 bc. Many other dangerous substances would have been considered effective treatments simply because of the body’s natural reaction of vomiting them out after swallowing.
In King Lear, when Regan is killed by her sister Goneril with ‘medicine’, her symptoms are entirely what you would expect for an overdose of an Elizabethan remedy. Regan describes her condition: ‘My sickness grows upon me.’ She is ‘Sick, O, sick!’
While people may have been accepting of mild everyday poisoning, deliberate poisoning was very different. Poison was, and still is, seen as a particularly underhand method of murder. Unlike suddenly lashing out in the heat of an argument, poisoning takes time and planning. There are lots of opportunities for the potential poisoner to pause, reflect and reconsider their actions before it is too late. Nor does the victim have an opportunity to defend himself or herself. It is perhaps then no surprise that those found guilty of poisoning are often considered the worst kind of murderer and are singled out for extra punishment. The sixteenth century was no different.
For example, in 1531, Richard Roose, a cook for the Bishop of Rochester, added poison to his master’s evening meal. Two of the Bishop’s guests died and several others were left with permanent ill-health. The Bishop survived but only because he wasn’t feeling hungry that day. Roose claimed, after being tortured on the rack, that he had added laxatives to the meal as a joke, but no one else saw the funny side. His punishment was to be boiled to death in a cauldron.
* * *
Poison would seem to offer a lot of dramatic potential for the Elizabethan stage. There are certainly many references to poisons and poisonings dotted throughout Shakespeare’s work. The word ‘poison’ appears over 130 times, ‘venom’ more than 40, and he scattered the names of poisonous plants and animals throughout his plays. In Hamlet alone lethal substances are poured into ears, smeared on swords and dissolved in drinks.
Using toxic substances to murder in a play has certain dramatic and practical advantages. There is no need for blood and gore to be used, which is always messy and a nightmare for the laundress to get out of the costumes. Actors also get to make the most of their death scene with choking, maybe some twitching or even convulsions. Such displays might not always have been scientifically accurate but it is convenient shorthand to let an audience know a character has been poisoned. Melodramatic endings like this are not always popular. One commentator wrote of the eighteenth-century actor David Garrick’s drawn-out demise in Hamlet, ‘we are not fond of characters writhing and flouncing on carpets’.
Modern audiences may love a good poisoning, as can be evidenced by the continuing popularity of Agatha Christie stories. But the fashion in Shakespeare’s day was for exuberant displays of swordsmanship, and the playwright gave the audience what it wanted. The majority of Shakespearean deaths occur at the end of a sword or dagger. Relatively few characters die from being poisoned. What is surprising, given how knowledgeable Shakespeare was on a variety of subjects, is how poorly planned out his poisonings are. The Bard was brilliant at many things, but toxicology was evidently not one of them. Nevertheless, the poisons and poisonings included in his work are very interesting.
* * *
Shakespeare’s knowledge of poison is patchy. If he describes symptoms, he rarely names the poison that caused them. On the other hand, if he names the poison, he rarely discusses how it will affect someone. For example, he names one poison ‘ratsbane’ to show the vindictive nature of some of his characters, without ever mentioning the symptoms. In King Lear, Edgar, who has disguised himself as Poor Tom, complains how others have treated him:
Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge …
Shakespeare’s ‘ratsbane’ (rat poison) was probably arsenic, the poison made notorious over the centuries because of its frequent use to murder. It gets several mentions from the playwright, and all of them are to show the malicious intent of a character. In Henry IV Part I the Shepherd curses his adopted daughter, Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), ‘Now cursed be the time / Of thy nativity! I would the milk / Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’dst her breast, / Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake’. And in Henry IV Part II Falstaff quips, ‘[I] had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as to offer it with security’.
Shakespeare’s knowledge of poisons extends beyond arsenic. The highest concentration of poisonous substances is to be found in the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth. The three weird sisters take it in turns to add ingredients to the pot. The first begins:
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
Poisoned entrails and venom are obviously not good for anyone’s health, but these tantalising toxic details could be a subtle reference to the Borgias. Some members of the Borgias, a powerful Spanish-Italian family, were alleged to have been poisoning people around the turn of the sixteenth century using their own special preparation named ‘La Cantarella’. The recipe called for a pig (some accounts say a bear) and a lot of arsenic. The arsenic was first used to kill the pig/bear and then the poisoned entrails were sprinkled with more arsenic and left to rot down until a soupy mess was produced. Then the water was gently evaporated off to leave a pale powder. This powder was the Cantarella, which was reportedly added to various meals served to the Borgias’ enemies. If this poison recipe seems elaborate, it has nothing on Macbeth’s witches’ brew. The second sister continues:
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
None of the second sister’s contributions are particularly toxic. If the addition of snake parts was supposed to be poisonous, the ‘Adder’s fork’ (its tongue) was the wrong bit. Shakespeare, however, does seem to have been under the impression that snakes delivered their venom using their forked tongue, as shown in Edward III – ‘Let creeping serpents hid in hollow banks / Sting with their tongues’. But even if they weren’t strictly poisonous, none of the ingredients sounds very pleasant and most of the animals included have negative associations. The third sister is clearly the medical and herb expert.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
Two ingredients on the list, hemlock and yew, are well known for their toxicity. Hemlock’s toxic notoriety comes from its use in ancient Rome, particularly in killing Socrates in 399 bc. Shakespeare names the plant three times in his works, but usually as a weed that easily seeds and takes over, rather than as the source of anything deadly. Yew, on the other hand, in the six times Shakespeare names it, is always associated with death. The trees often grow in English churchyards, and are therefore associated with the dead in the same way as cypress trees are in continental Europe.1 But, unlike cypress, yew can also cause death as every part of the plant, except the flesh of the red berries, is toxic. The wood of the yew tree was also used to make bows and so Shakespeare is able to talk ‘Of double-fatal yew’ in Richard II to show the seriousness of the threat from an army.
One of the additions to the cauldron is not so easily recognisable as a poison. ‘Tooth of wolf’ may be just that, or it could refer to ergot, a black fungus resembling the shape of a fang that grows in cereal crops. Eating the fungus can cause blackening of the fingers, due to vasoconstriction cutting off the blood supply, as well as psychological effects.2 In the past ergot was responsible for whole villages experiencing mass hallucinations when people ate bread made from contaminated flour. It was also used for centuries in herbal medicine to induce birth,3 and today derivatives from the fungus are still used, safely, in conventional medicine to control post-partem bleeding.
The three sisters also express knowledge of specifically how and when ingredients should be collected, and it is true that levels of toxicity in a plant can change over the growing season. But the methods they describe, collecting at night, whether intended to minimise or maximise toxicity, would not be effective.
The witches’ concoction is intended as a ‘charm’, but to what purpose is not said. Though the three sisters are clearly up to no good, they don’t seem to be out to deliberately kill anyone. They may be encouraging Macbeth in his murderous acts, but they are not supplying him with poison to carry them out. The contents of their cauldron, however, would probably be an effective poison if anyone were rash enough to drink it.
Poisons can of course be beneficial, in the right circumstances and dose. As Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century physician and father of toxicology, said, ‘it is the dose that makes the poison’. Or, as Shakespeare put it in Henry IV Part II, ‘In poison there is physic’. Substances that interact with the body can modify a process in a way that corrects a fault. The same substance given in excess can change that process dramatically, or stop it all together, so that the body cannot function properly. For example, a drug that slows the heart rate can be useful in treating a heart that beats too fast. Too much of the same drug can slow the heart until it stops.
The potential dual nature of some substances was certainly understood by Shakespeare, even if the mechanism by which they acted was not. For example, Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet comments, ‘Within the infant rind of this small flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power’. He is collecting materials that might be used as medicines but he is well aware of their potential dangers:
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse …
The Friar is able to put his knowledge to good use when he gives Juliet the potion that will make her appear dead (see Chapter 3). Such detailed medical knowledge is not unsurprising for a friar. Religious men were among the most highly educated groups of people in Shakespeare’s day and were often looked to for medical help.4 Friar Laurence did what he thought best for both Juliet and Romeo; he couldn’t have foreseen the disasters that awaited them. Other religious figures in Shakespeare’s plays are not so benevolent and use their knowledge of plants and potions for deadly effect – ‘The king, I fear, is poison’d by a monk’. The king in question is John and his death is one of the few poisonings that Shakespeare describes in detail.
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As King of England, John was in a position of great power, but in the play he is portrayed as a weak monarch who perhaps does not have the strongest claim to the throne. He therefore has reason to worry that someone might try to poison him and sensibly employs a taster. Unfortunately he chooses poorly; it is his taster who poisons him. It might be imagined that a monk would be a trustworthy individual, ideal for such a role, but the monk in question is ‘a resolved villain’.
In an extraordinary detail it is said that the monk’s ‘bowels suddenly burst out’. This may be another way of saying ‘spilling his guts’ or confessing to the poisoning. It might also refer to a very physical symptom such as extreme vomiting or diarrhoea, perhaps from tasting his own poison. Another possible explanation is post-mortem swelling of the body. This swelling is most likely in the stomach area, where bacteria in the gut continue to feed on the individual’s last meal and then the individual himself. The result of this feeding frenzy is rapid replication of bacteria and the production of gas. The abdomen inflates and if the gas builds up enough pressure, and there is no alternative outlet, bodies can rip apart suddenly and violently. What the phrase almost certainly doesn’t mean is that poison literally caused his intestines to explode – no poison does that, not even in Shakespeare.
The monk never appears onstage to explain why he poisoned the monarch or how he did it. But King John is given considerable time to describe his symptoms in graphic detail, giving us clues as to what he might have swallowed. There is a ‘burning quality’, ‘raging’, ‘strange fantasies’ or hallucinations, and the King describes his ‘bowels crumble up to dust’, ‘my burn’d bosom’, ‘my parched lips’ and ‘The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burn’d’.
Despite the abundance of information it is difficult to identify exactly what poison might cause such effects. White phosphorus poisoning gives a burning sensation and unquenchable thirst, but the element was unknown in Shakespeare’s day. Blistering agents such as cantharides, sometimes known as ‘Spanish fly’ though the poison comes from a beetle, damage skin on contact. Strong acids or chemicals such as lye (see Chapter 2) can cause chemical burns – these are chemical reactions with skin and other tissues that can result in serious, even fatal, damage. Any of these would certainly explain the burning sensations, but not the hallucinations and the bowels crumbling to dust.
Perhaps a more likely candidate is aconitine. Symptoms of aconitine poisoning include a characteristic burning sensation in the mouth and throat, tingling and numbness in the skin, nausea, vomiting, chest pain and shallow breathing, convulsions and finally death because of respiratory failure or ventricular fibrillation. The poison comes from Aconitum, commonly known as monkshood, a species of plant that grows throughout Europe and is the most toxic native plant in the UK.5 The toxic properties of Aconitum were certainly known to Shakespeare: the plant is named in Henry IV Part II and compared with gunpowder in terms of the damage it could do to the body. It still doesn’t explain King John’s hallucinations, but then the poisoner could have used a mixture of several poisons.
Another toxic plant native to the UK is Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade. Atropine, the toxic component found mostly in the berries of the plant, interacts with nerves. The result is an increased heart rate and drying up of secretions such as sweat, saliva and digestive juices. The interaction with nerves can also, in about half the population, cause visual, realistic hallucinations (as opposed to the psychedelic colours and patterns experienced with LSD). A combination of aconitine and atropine would easily explain all King John’s symptoms.
Alternatively Shakespeare may have selected a range of symptoms purely for artistic effect. But he certainly didn’t invent King John’s poisoning itself. Holinshed’s Chronicles, Shakespeare’s source for the play, offered several possible explanations for the monarch’s death, including poisoning by a monk. The real cause of death, however, is most likely to have been dysentery.
* * *
Monks and wise women were clearly knowledgeable about the production and use of poisonous substances. Such specialist knowledge was not available to everyone, thankfully. When Romeo needs to get hold of a poison in Romeo and Juliet, he has to consult an expert, and he chooses an apothecary.
Romeo is clear what he wants:
let me have
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins
That the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.
But the apothecary is equally clear that selling poison is against the law, a tricky line to walk when most medicines at the time were also highly toxic. Nevertheless he is a poor man and Romeo’s generous offer of 40 ducats sways him. The fact that he doesn’t have to prepare anything and can instantly produce a bottle of poison meeting the criteria suggests, rather worryingly, that there was already a demand for such things and Romeo’s request was not the first or even that unusual. And although the apothecary does not give a list of ingredients, the lethality of the liquid is spelled out in no uncertain terms: ‘Put this in any liquid thing you will, / And drink it off; and, if you had the strength / Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.’
Whatever is inside the bottle, it is fast-acting and very potent, even when diluted. The apothecary’s dire warnings are confirmed later when Romeo drinks it. The poison takes effect the instant he swallows it and he only has time to gasp out two lines and give Juliet a quick kiss before dying. Few poisons act so rapidly, and of those, fewer still were known about in the sixteenth century. The most likely candidate is cyanide, which could be extracted from a number of plant sources including peach or apricot stones and laurel leaves.6
If it was cyanide, Juliet’s attempt to kill herself using traces of poison that were still on Romeo’s lips could have worked. Cyanide compounds react with stomach acid to produce hydrogen cyanide, a gas, which can easily escape through the mouth and kill someone who kisses the lips of a cyanide victim, whether romantically or through attempts to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A case in the USA illustrated this when a young couple, engaged to be married, sat next to each other on a sofa to discuss their wedding plans. The man took a piece of chewing gum from a packet and started to chew, but the gum contained a lethal amount of cyanide. The couple were found dead still sitting next to each other, the woman having died after kissing her beloved.7
Cyanide may be swift but it isn’t pleasant. Inside the body, cyanide bonds to the active site of the enzyme cytochrome oxidase; this enzyme is crucial for converting glucose and oxygen into energy inside the cells of the body. If cyanide is present, no matter how much oxygen the body breathes in, the enzyme simply cannot process it. If a cell can’t produce energy it rapidly dies. Cyanide kills because it causes massive cell death. Cells that require the most energy, such as nerves, are the most vulnerable and die first, causing headache, dizziness and convulsions, as well as vomiting and rapid pulse, before collapse and death. Any and all of these symptoms can occur within minutes. Romeo shows no interest in what the poison is; he simply sees it as a means to a tragic end. A more detailed knowledge might have dissuaded him from taking it.
Romeo may be uninterested in the poison’s effects but other characters were not so happy in ignorance. Wise women, monks and apothecaries had legitimate reasons to investigate toxic substances in their professions. But when kings and queens start investigating poisons and their effects, their reasons are more likely to be malicious.
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The Queen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline dedicates herself to researching all manner of chemical methods of killing so that she can murder those who stand in her way. Her intended victims are her husband the King and stepdaughter Imogen. She is the prototypical wicked stepmother familiar from so many fairy tales.
The Queen employs a doctor, Cornelius, to tutor her in how to synthesise her own perfumes and other preparations. What starts as lessons in basic chemistry techniques soon escalates into the study of poisons. Her excuse is that she simply wants to expand her knowledge, but her insistence that she only intends to kill small animals and not humans is hardly reassuring. Her reasoning is, ‘To try the vigour of them and apply / Allayments to their act, and by them gather / Their several virtues and effects.’ This is an unpleasant but scientifically reasonable way of determining the effects of different substances. To test an antidote for a poison you have to administer the poison as well to see if it works. And, as discussed earlier, what may be considered a poison in one context, in appropriate quantities, can be beneficial to health in another context.
The Queen uses a medical pretext to try to fool not only the doctor but also her intended victim, Imogen. She hands her stepdaughter the poisons in a box she claims is full of medicines. The doctor, however, has not been reassured by the Queen’s talk of ‘virtues’ and beneficial effects. He may not be aware exactly what her plans are, but he is uneasy and wise enough to sabotage them. He tells the audience of his suspicions in an aside – ‘I do suspect you, madam; / But you shall do no harm.’ In place of the lethal poisons he substitutes drugs that ‘Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile’ rather than kill. When Imogen swallows the contents of the box, thinking they are mild medicines, she is knocked unconscious and the Queen’s plans are thwarted.
Later, not realising the poisons had been swapped and Imogen lives, the Queen ‘did confess she had / For you a mortal mineral; which, being took, / Should by the minute feed on life and lingering / By inches waste you’. Arsenic, lead or mercury-based compounds could all be considered a type of ‘mortal mineral’, though none of them would induce unconsciousness or a death-like appearance. The cautious doctor must have substituted something soporific in their place rather than simply diluting the mineral the Queen had requested (see Chapter 3 for some possibilities).
Cymbeline is rarely performed today and is perhaps one of Shakespeare’s least known plays. The malevolent monarch has been eclipsed in the public consciousness by another poison-obsessed royal figure, Cleopatra.
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The real-life Egyptian Queen had a reputation for her extensive toxicological knowledge – ‘She hath pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die’. She fits many of the stereotypes of a poisoner: calculating, cunning and female. Poison may have a reputation as a woman’s weapon, but this is without foundation.8 Shakespeare has more male poisoners than female.
The playwright’s knowledge of Cleopatra’s history came from Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. The Greek biographer asserted that the Egyptian Queen had made a study of poisonous substances. She is said to have built up a collection of poisons and experimented with them on prisoners condemned to death. Her experiments led her to conclude that poisons that acted quickly also caused extreme pain and convulsions. By contrast she believed that milder poisons were slower to act. She used the same methods to investigate bites from venomous creatures. According to Plutarch she watched these experiments personally. Her research may have been relatively scientific in its approach, but the methods were cruel and her conclusions were wrong.
Plutarch distinguished between venoms and poisons, although many others use the words interchangeably, particularly Shakespeare. In fact they are very different things. A poison is a toxic substance that is capable of causing the death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed. A venom is a special type of poisonous substance, one secreted by an animal specifically as an act of aggression, rather than in defence.
In defence an animal only needs to distract the predator long enough to escape, usually by causing pain. In predation, on the other hand, the venom has to kill or disable the victim rapidly before it can get away. Venoms have a lot of work to do and quickly, so they are often, but not always, more complex mixtures than those used for defence. Venoms can include any and all of the following categories of substances: salts, peptides, proteins (such as enzymes), lipids and amines. All of these compounds will have a potential role in disabling the victim. For example, potassium salts can induce pain by causing nerves to fire. Enzymes operate as molecular machines that can rapidly carry out chemical reactions and, in the case of those in venoms, may destroy blood vessels and tissue, cause blood clots or prevent blood from clotting, as well as a host of other damaging effects on the body. Members of the amine class of compounds can act as neurotransmitters also affecting nerves.
How lethal a venom is depends on several factors – the toxicity of the components, how much can be delivered by the animal in a bite and where the victim is bitten. Toxicity is often measured by a number known as the LD50, the quantity required to kill half of a number of test animals. How much venom is delivered in a bite or repeated biting depends both on the animal and on the situation. The site of injection is also important. Some venoms are more toxic when injected into a vein or the abdominal cavity. Others are more lethal when injected under the skin or into muscle.
According to Plutarch, Cleopatra’s investigations into venoms led her to believe that the bite of an asp was the best option for suicide as it brought on a gradual lethargy, ‘in which the face was covered with a gentle sweat, and the senses sunk easily into stupefication’. Given the complexity of different venoms and how they act, it is no surprise she got things a bit wrong. If she had wanted a gentle, painless death it is unlikely that she got her way using an asp.
Roman and Greek writers referred to asps in a way that suggests the word was a common name for several different species. The most common species of snake in Egypt is the Egyptian cobra, Naja haje, and is the snake usually associated with ancient Egyptian culture. It measures 1–1.5m (3–5ft) in length and can deliver a lethal bite. Its venom contains mostly neurotoxins and cytotoxins (substances toxic to cells). The neurotoxins prevent signals from being sent between nerves, resulting in several symptoms. There will be a lot of pain at the site of the bite as well as in the abdomen. The effect on nerves that control muscles means there will be a slow flaccid paralysis, which is perhaps what Cleopatra observed in her experiments. When the paralysing effects progress to the heart and lungs, death results from complete respiratory collapse, but there is likely to be dizziness and convulsions before that happens. The effects of the cytotoxins will be seen as severe swelling, blistering, bruising and necrosis (cell death).
All of this presents considerable problems when it comes to Cleopatra’s famous suicide. For a start, the snake was supposed to have been brought to Cleopatra in a basket of figs. But the basket would have been far too small to contain a snake big enough to kill.9 The death itself is also difficult to explain based on the accounts left to us.
Shakespeare has Cleopatra describe the bite as ‘sweet balm’ and ‘soft as air’, but this is far from what it is likely to have felt like. Egyptian cobra bites are painful enough as it is, but her choice of where to be bitten possibly made things worse. Different parts of the body have different numbers of nerve endings detecting pain, so it is theoretically possible to map out the most painful places using a good knowledge of nerve distribution. One researcher went a step further and tested the theory with practical experiments. In 2014, Michael Smith allowed himself to be stung five times by honey bees each morning. He then rated the pain on a scale of 1–10. Over a period of weeks he was stung in 25 different parts of his body. The most painful place to be stung, he concluded, was the nostril, which he scored 9.0.10
Shakespeare has the Queen apply the snake to her breast, though probably more for reasons of artistry than for historical accuracy, followed by another bite to the arm.11 According to Smith’s pain scale, the nipple pain level rated 6.7 out of a possible 10. The top of the forearm scored 5.0 and the wrist 4.7. Cleopatra would have been better off persuading the snake to bite the skin of her skull or the tip of her middle toe, both of which score a mere 2.3 on Smith’s scale.
After being bitten, Plutarch reports that the Queen died very quickly, too quickly for those who ran to help her. This rapid death is copied by Shakespeare in his play; there is scarcely time for a dozen lines between the bite and her death. Charmian, one of Cleopatra’s attendants, also applies an asp to her own arm but doesn’t even make it through seven lines of dialogue; she just has time to make adjustments to Cleopatra’s diadem (perhaps the convulsions knocked it askew), before she collapses.
A guard enters six lines after the death, too late to be of any help. Even if someone had been there on the spot, instantly sucking the venom from the wound, it would not have saved her. Venoms spread quickly through the body. It is unlikely anyone would be able to suck hard enough to remove the toxic substances. Likewise, you wouldn’t be able to cut into the flesh with a knife quickly and deeply enough to stop the venom from spreading.12 And while the spread of venom through the body is indeed very rapid, death from the venom of the Egyptian cobra is not. The effects of the toxins within the venom take time to develop and kill.
In the play, as more people enter the scene they find not only Cleopatra and Antony, but also two attendants, ‘All dead.’ With no obvious sign of how the women died, investigations are made. Poisoning is suspected but dismissed instantly because there is no sign of swelling on any of the bodies. But closer inspection of Cleopatra reveals ‘Here, on her breast, / There is a vent of blood and something blown: / The like is on her arm’, perhaps the mark of the bite itself together with the bruising and blistering effects of the venom. Further evidence of a snake is discovered: ‘This is an aspic’s trail: and these fig-leaves / Have slime upon them, such as the aspic leaves / Upon the caves of Nile’.13
The search for evidence is only cursory, and the bodies of the attendants, Charmian and Iras, don’t even get a glance. Had they been examined, the bite marks on Charmian’s arm would have been discovered, but Iras’s body would have presented a considerable puzzle. There would be no marks to find. She dies instantly after kissing Cleopatra on the lips. At this point the Queen hadn’t yet been bitten by the snake, so it can’t be a mistaken belief that toxins in the body from a snake bite are somehow transferable by a kiss. There must be some other explanation for Iras’s death; perhaps she died of grief or distress (see Chapter 10).
The inconsistencies between the accounts of Cleopatra’s death and the reality of death by cobra venom have created a lot of doubt in people’s minds. Plutarch also acknowledged these doubts and wrote about several alternative theories. He included one account that said no snake was found in the room, but that reptile tracks were apparently found on the sea sands opposite the windows of her apartment. The reason for assuming she had been bitten by a snake may be because it was a symbol commonly used by the kings of Egypt and would have been depicted on Cleopatra’s diadem. Another theory Plutarch put forward was that she had in fact used poison that she kept concealed in a hollow bodkin worn in her hair.
Any confusion over how exactly Cleopatra died has nothing to do with Shakespeare or his poor knowledge of venoms. In Antony and Cleopatra he was dramatising historical events and any errors are from mistakes or misunderstandings in his sources. He didn’t need to invent anything; the iconic death was already full of drama before Shakespeare put it onstage. In other plays he used his imagination more freely.
* * *
Hamlet contains more poisonings than any other play (at least three different poisons contributing to five deaths), but what poisons were used on which characters has left many people scratching their heads. The most famous poisoning in the play, that of Old Hamlet, is described in great detail and the poison used is even named. But despite the apparent wealth of information it is still not clear what killed him.
According to the account related to Hamlet by his father’s ghost, Old Hamlet was deliberately poisoned by his brother Claudius. Whether Hamlet is hallucinating or he really sees the departed soul of his father is a debate for another book. If we assume what Hamlet hears is a true account of events, there is a huge amount of detail about not only what Claudius did, but how he hoped to get away with it.
Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous 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 vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d …
The poison is named as hebona, but no such poison seems to exist. Spelling was something of a movable feast until it was standardised in the eighteenth century. Before then words were constructed out of letters based on pronunciation and personal taste. So perhaps in Hamlet the playwright is just using an unusual spelling for something else. Possibilities include hemlock, hellebore, henbane or ebony.
First, the least convincing possibility: hemlock. Even if Shakespeare took extreme liberties with the spelling, it is a stretch to get to hebona from hemlock. The symptoms of hemlock poisoning, either dizziness and convulsions or a creeping paralysis, depending on which of the two poisonous hemlock plants you are talking about, are also very unlike those described by Old Hamlet.
The second alternative is hellebore. In Pliny’s Natural History, written in the first century ad and a work certainly known to Shakespeare, there is a mention of these plants growing among vines and the wine produced from them causing abortions. Pliny also knew that the plant could kill horses and pigs if they ate it. But in humans it is most likely to cause a severe upset stomach rather than death.14
Henbane, the third possibility, is closer both in spelling and in possible symptoms. Hyoscyamus niger, commonly known as henbane, is one of the Solanaceae family of plants that contains a staggering number of toxic members, including jimsonweed and the deadly nightshade that we met earlier in the chapter. These plants, and several others in the same family, contain atropine, which switches on the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response. Pupils dilate, and secretions, like sweat and saliva, dry up. One other symptom that is sometimes observed is a rash, particularly on the upper torso, though this is not exactly the ‘vile and loathsome crust’ Old Hamlet complains of.
Another connection in support of henbane is a reference in Pliny’s Natural History. The book contains a recipe for curing earache using the juice of henbane, opium and rose-oil among other ingredients. The mixture was warmed up and introduced into the ear using a syringe. It would also explain Shakespeare’s strange choice of the ear as the site for applying the poison.
Poisons are usually ingested or injected in some way. A few can be inhaled and some can be absorbed through the skin. However, the ear is a particularly poor choice for application. The inside of the ear is protected with wax, making absorption difficult. There are also relatively few blood vessels in the ear that can absorb the poison into the body proper. However, if Pliny is anything to go by, pouring things into the ear was a more common way of administering drugs than might be imagined, though with no obvious benefits and probably considerable discomfort.
The final possibility, ebony, or hebenus or hebeno as it was sometimes referred to, may on the face of it seem less convincing. The spelling is very similar, but ebony is not particularly poisonous and was not considered to be so in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But there is another type of wood that was often confused with ebony at the time, from the tree Guaiacum officinale L. This tree grows in the West Indies and on the north coast of South America and was named by the natives of Hispaniola, who called it guaiacum or guaiacan. Another name given to the tree was ‘pockwood’ because extracts of the wood were often used to treat the pox or syphilis (see Chapter 7).15
This offers an alternative interpretation of Old Hamlet’s revelations to his son. He is perhaps accusing his wife of infecting him with syphilis contracted from her affair with his brother. There are other allusions to syphilitic infection in this passage. Old Hamlet says the poison caused his skin to become ‘bark’d’, ‘crusted’ and ‘lazar-like’, terms often used in the past to describe the secondary stages of syphilis when an all-over rash of pustules appeared. The poison, or the hebona juice, is also described as a ‘leprous distilment’, and in Shakespeare’s day leprosy was often used as an all-encompassing term for diseases that affected the skin. Further, the poison is said to run through his veins ‘swift as quicksilver’ – an alternative name for mercury and perhaps a reference to mercury treatments for syphilis.
Syphilis is far from a definitive interpretation of this passage in the play, but there are enough references to the disease for Shakespeare’s audiences to have picked up on them. Later on, when Hamlet confronts his mother, he makes further suggestive remarks: ‘Such an act […] takes off the rose / From the fair forehead of an innocent love, / And sets a blister there’ may be an allusion to the first signs of syphilitic infection, a sore or chancre. Hamlet also uses the word ‘burn’ in a way to suggest painful urination, a symptom of venereal infection. Other phrases he uses, such as ‘panders will’ and ‘Stew’d in corruption’, would be associated in the audience’s minds with brothels, the common source of syphilitic infection.
Of course, Shakespeare may not have meant any of this and could have invented a poison to suit his theatrical needs. But the effects seem so specifically described that it is hard to believe he was not referring to something real. He might also have simply borrowed the name from somewhere or someone else. Christopher Marlowe used the name ‘hebon’ for a poison he mentioned in The Jew of Malta, a play written long before Hamlet, but Marlowe included no information about symptoms or origins of the toxic substance.
If Shakespeare didn’t borrow the idea from Marlowe, maybe it was from the original story of Hamlet. The tale comes from a Scandinavian legend first recorded around 1200 ad by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum. But this version has the old king killed by a snake bite. In Shakespeare’s version this is the story put about by Claudius to explain Old Hamlet’s sudden death, as the ghost explains: ‘’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me.’ In Hamlet the snake story seems to be generally believed, but is it a credible explanation for Old Hamlet’s untimely death?
There certainly is a venomous snake native to Denmark, the European asp (Vipera aspis). The venom from this snake can produce symptoms including rapidly spreading acute pain, which would certainly fit the description of ‘swift as quicksilver it courses through / The natural gates and alleys of the body’. This is followed by swelling from oedema (excess fluid accumulating in the cavities and tissues of the body). Blood vessels and tissue are degraded, causing severe necrosis. The venom has both coagulant and anticoagulant effects causing significant changes to the blood, perhaps something like ‘it doth posset / And curd, like eager droppings into milk, / The thin and wholesome blood’. It was certainly a believable explanation for Old Hamlet’s symptoms and death. It is not surprising Claudius got away with it for so long.
Hamlet’s method of exposing Claudius’s guilt, by getting a visiting acting troupe to act out a play featuring an identical method of murder, is unconventional. It is more like Poirot’s revelations at the end of an Agatha Christie novel than modern methods of acquiring evidence from forensic examinations and trials in courts of law.16 And though, as we would hope, the guilty are punished, Hamlet’s inactions after exposing his uncle’s guilt characterise the play. He is pressured to take revenge, but completely fails to do so, resulting in a lot of innocent deaths along the way.
It all comes to a head in the final scene of the play when Hamlet and Laertes are set to fight. Hamlet believes he has the advantage because he has been practising his fencing skills, but he doesn’t know the odds are stacked against him. Claudius has conspired with Laertes, and the tip of his sword has been laced with poison: ‘I’ll touch my point / With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, / It may be death.’ And, to make sure Hamlet will be killed, even if he wins the match, Claudius promises to add another poison to the winner’s drink.
These are both rather more conventional methods of poisoning. Shakespeare doesn’t even bother to name the substances used. Whatever they are, they are fast-acting. Cyanide might be a likely candidate for the cup. What is added to the sword is more difficult to guess. Whatever it is it must be lethal in very small amounts and swift in its action. Aconitine, mentioned earlier in association with King John, is one possibility as extracts of the plant were used as an arrow poison in ancient times.
Another possibility is curare, a nerve toxin used to tip arrows in central and southern America. It causes paralysis and kills because the lungs can no longer expand to take in oxygen. It is only toxic when introduced into the bloodstream and can be safely eaten, meaning hunters could eat their kill without fearing they would also be poisoned. This exotic arrow poison was first heard about in England in 1596 after Sir Walter Raleigh returned from his explorations in the Americas, though it is possible the poison he wrote about wasn’t curare.
Claudius’s and Laertes’s plan works, up to a point, but they clearly haven’t thought through all the possibilities. Such fast-acting and potent poisons leave others vulnerable to their effects. Their actions result in four deaths rather than the hoped-for one. Gertrude, innocent of the plot, drinks a toast to her son from the poisoned cup and dies soon after. Laertes receives a wound from the poisoned sword and becomes another victim. Hamlet is wounded as expected and the poison starts to take effect. Before he succumbs he stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword. What poisons were used is not important in this scene. The point is the acceleration of action, the death after death that builds to the climactic finish, contrasted with the sudden stillness of Horatio who, of all the main characters in the play, is the only one left alive to tell their tragic tale.
Notes
1 In Twelfth Night, Feste names both trees in his song about death.
2 LSD was developed from compounds found within ergot.
3 At considerable risk to the mother and child, it might be added, as the crude preparation cut off blood supply to the baby rather than specifically inducing birth.
4 The witches in Macbeth could also be an unflattering portrayal of wise women, another common source of medical expertise at the time.
5 A single gram of plant material can kill, or a mere two milligrams of pure aconitine, if swallowed. The roots have been mistaken for wild radishes, with fatal results.
6 Nicotine would act with similar rapidity, but tobacco was relatively new to Europe and probably too expensive for a poor apothecary.
7 The poisoner and the reason for the poisoning was never discovered.
8 Though it is true that a larger percentage of female murderers use poison than male, the number is still very small. There are far more male murderers than female, meaning that overall, male poisoners outnumber the women.
9 One account reported in Plutarch says the snake was carried into the room in a water vessel and that the Queen had to torment it with a needle before it would bite.
10 Smith was awarded an Ig Nobel prize for his work. The prize has been awarded to scientists since 1991 to ‘honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think’.
11 Plutarch also claims the marks of a snake bite were found on Cleopatra’s arm.
12 The best advice, should you find someone who has been bitten by a snake, is to apply pressure to the wound and call an ambulance.
13 Shakespeare clearly knew very little about snakes – they do not leave a slimy trail.
14 Even so, please don’t eat hellebore or feed it to other people.
15 Ineffectively, it might be added.
16 Indeed, Christie borrowed the title of Hamlet’s play within a play, The Mousetrap, for her most successful stage play.