“Women were expected to plant and tend their own gardens complete with herbs to address basic healthcare needs of the household. “Input from the emerging professions of physicians and ‘barber surgeons’ coexisted with folk medicine, which was familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries,” Meghan Petersen, a librarian and archivist at the Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire, explained to Hyperallergic.

Byrne after Edward Edwards of the three witches of Macbeth concoting a potion in their cauldron (1773) (via Wellcome Images/Wikimedia) Herbals recorded the plant-based concoctions, and through these rare books we can connect his references to remedies of the 16th and 17th century, whether the potent sleeping draught consumed by Juliet, or the rosemary “for remembrance” perfuming Ophelia’s bouquet.

Potions, poisons, and symbolic herbs are frequent plot devices in the plays of William Shakespeare, and reflect the medical knowledge of his time. John Gerard, Robert Davies, Thomas Johnson, Robert Priest, John Payne, and Rembert Dodoens, ‘The herball or Generall historie of plantes’ (London, 1633), printed by Adam Islip Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers (courtesy Currier Museum of Art Library and Archives)

Pills and potions piano chords