been credited to ebony may have been really due to the yew. Spenser, for example, writes: "Lay now thy Heben bow aside"; "A speare of Heben wood" and "trees of bitter gall and Heben sad." These references are more likely to be to the yew than to the ebony: and certainly could not have been applied to the henbane weeds. Gower (1390) has "Of hebanus the sleepy tree." In Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" (1592, contemporary with Shakespeare), several deadly things are grouped thus:—
"The blood of Hydra, Lerna's bane,
The juice of Hebon, and Cocytus' breath."
There is no tradition of poisonous properties associated with ebony, as there is with both henbane and yew, but in regard to henbane, a remarkable passage has been found in Holland's translation of Pliny which was published in London just about the time when Shakespeare was writing "Hamlet." Pliny, dealing with henbane, says (in this translation): "An oile is made of the seed thereof which if it be but dropped into the eares is ynough to trouble the braine." Shakespeare must have been a voracious reader, he probably got Holland's book as soon as it came out, and finding this passage, adopted the suggestion. He was no doubt familiar with the word hebon or hebonus, and chose that for his verse, perhaps without caring very much whether it was a correct interpretation of henbane or not. As a matter of fact, in the earlier editions of "Hamlet" the word appears as hebona. In the folios, which came later, hebonon is substituted, no doubt out of consideration for euphony.
It is notable that the player who enacts the
