#hebenon

[deardenmarkdiary]

‘Tis four and twenty! Horatio, ablaze the hebenon!

[teufelskunst]

Hebenon

It is supposed that this is the noxious herb referred to by Shakespeare in Hamlet:

'Sleeping within mine orchard, My custom always of the afternoon Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of mine ear did pour The leprous distillment.'

Other authorities argue that the name used here is a varied form of that by which the Yew is known in at least five of the Gothic languages, and which appears in Marlowe and other Elizabethan writers as 'hebon.' There can be little doubt that Shakespeare took both the name and the use of this plant from Marlowe, who mentions 'juice of hebon' as a deadly poison. Hebenus, according to Gower, is a 'sleepy tree.' Spenser, too, makes 'heben' a tree, and speaks of 'the deadly heben bow,' a weapon that could hardly be made of Henbane. 'This tree,' wrote Lyte in his Herball, 1578, 'is altogether venomous and against man's nature; such as do only sleepe under the shadow thereof become sicke and sometimes they die,' whereas he recommends the juice of Henbane as an application for earache.