Hebenon

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Black henbane - one of the possible meanings of Hebenone

In his tragedy Hamlet , William Shakespeare describes a plant whose poison is used to murder Hamlet's father as Hebenon or Hebona . In Shakespeare research, what could be meant by Hebenon has been discussed since the 19th century .

Text passage

The ghost of Hamlet's father mentions Hebenon or Hebona in the 5th scene of the first act. The spelling differs in the early Shakespeare editions; while Hebona is mentioned in the quarto editions of 1603 (a so-called bad quarto ) and 1604 , the first complete folio edition of 1623 , which is considered particularly reliable, uses Hebenon :

"... In the after noone, vpon my secure houre
Thy vncle came, with iuyce of Hebona ..."

- William Shakespeare : Hamlet, Quarto 1

“… Vpon my secure houre, thy Vncle stole
With iuyce of cursed Hebona in a viall,…”

- William Shakespeare : Hamlet, Quarto 2

"... Vpon my secure hower thy Vncle stole
With iuyce of cursed Hebenon in a Violl, ..."

- William Shakespeare : Hamlet, folio 1

At this point, the ghost tells Hamlet how he was poisoned by his brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, by dripping Hebenon into his ear while he was sleeping in the garden. It is the only mention of Hebenon in Shakespeare's works.

Interpretations

In a study of 1877 were as previously suspected meanings henbane ( henbane ), ebony ( Ebony ), hemlock ( hemlock ) and enoron (in Shakespeare's day a name for the deadly nightshade enumerated). In addition, hebenone is interpreted as an essential oil of tobacco in a herbal medicine publication from 1831 . This is justified by the fact that tobacco has often been referred to as the henbane of Peru , that the essential oil of tobacco is likely to have the deadly effect described by Shakespeare and that the royal court was hostile to tobacco in Shakespeare's time, which prompted Shakespeare to do so could have to show this as a substance with particularly malicious effects.

In 1920, the British philologist Henry Bradley suspected the following background that could have led to Shakespeare's Hebenon : John Gower (around 1330–1408) wrote in his English-language poem Confessio amatis of "hebenus, that slepy tre" (for example, "Hebenus, this sleepy tree" ). The Oxford English Dictionary assumed in its entry that Gower used the term in the same sense as later Christopher Marlowe (in whose play Der Jude von Malta juice of Hebon occurs) and after him Shakespeare, namely as a designation of a poisonous substance or "in a similar sense ”. Bradley contradicts this entry and emphasizes that Gower's poetry is simply about the ebony used to furnish the chamber of the god of sleep. According to Bradley, there is no reason to believe that Gower believed the ebony had a sleepy effect other than its black color. Bradley thinks it probable, however, that Marlowe only remembered Gower's line "Of hebenus, that slepy tre" without any context and concluded that the ebony tree had a narcotic sap. According to Bradley, it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on Marlowe for his part, although he could have mistaken Marlowe's juice of Hebon for henbane , which would explain that Shakespeare's symptoms of poisoning are more in line with henbane .

Several researchers have also suggested that Hebenon might be yew , the yew tree . The botanist KN Rao agreed with Shakespeare's 2004 essay on botany and held the yew tree to be the most likely meaning. In contrast, the linguist Anatoly Liberman in his Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology (2008) concludes that Hebenon is probably henbane , but wonders why Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe did not express this in "normal ( Elizabethan ) English".

The yew is well known as a poisonous plant and the similarity of the symptoms of poisoning described by the ghost in Hamlet with the descriptions of yew poisoning in medical literature from Shakespeare's time. For ebony or guaiac , which was assigned to ebony, speaks the fact that ebony was actually partially written with an h ; however, its low toxicity speaks against it, as Rao in particular emphasizes. On the other hand, the juice of the guaiac is said to have been able to trigger a leprosy- like disease, which in turn would match the symptoms in Shakespeare. For henbane , as for the yew, speaks for its toxicity and the possibility that hebenon could have arisen from henbane through a metathesis . But it is also questioned whether Shakespeare had any particular plant in mind.

German translations

In his translation of Hamlet (1766), Christoph Martin Wieland avoided the question of the meaning of Hebenon by limiting himself to writing about a “vial full of poison”. After that, however, henbane dominated the German translations. Already Johann Joachim Eschenburg , of Shakespeare's work on was the first to completely into German, wrote about a "bottle full of cursing juice of henbane". August Wilhelm Schlegel translated:

"... Your uncle stole my safe hour,
With juice of cursed henbane in a bottle ..."

- William Shakespeare : Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, translated by A. W. Schlegel

Johann Wilhelm Otto Benda wrote in his translation from 1826 of a "glass of enchanted henbane". Ernst Ortlepp and Friedrich Gundolf in his revision of Schlegel's translation and Frank Günther in his new translation, first published in 1995, stayed with "Saft verfluchten Bilsenkrauts" . Friedrich Köhler decided on a different interpretation for his translation, which was published by Reclam : for him it is “juice of the cursed Ebenbaums”.

literature

  • Henry Bradley: “Cursed Hebenon” (Or “Hebona”) . In: The Modern Language Review . tape 15 , no. 1 . Modern Humanities Research Association, January 1920, p. 85-87 , doi : 10.2307 / 3713817 , JSTOR : 3713817 .
  • Edward Tabor: Plant Poisons in Shakespeare. In: Economic Botany. 24/1, 1970, 86.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Shakespeare: Hamlet (Quarto 1, 1603), Act 1, Scene 5 ( English ) Internet Shakespeare Editions. Accessed May 31, 2019.
  2. ^ William Shakespeare: Hamlet (Quarto 2, 1604), Act 1, Scene 5 ( English ) Internet Shakespeare Editions. Archived from the original on August 14, 2014. Retrieved November 4, 2010.
  3. ^ William Shakespeare: Hamlet (Folio 1, 1623), Act 1, Scene 5 ( English ) Internet Shakespeare Editions. Accessed May 31, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Anatoly Liberman: A note on hebenon in Hamlet I, 5:62 . In: An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis etc. 2008, ISBN 978-0-8166-5272-3 , pp. 110-111 ( Google Books ).
  5. ↑ John Stephenson, James Morss Churchill: Medical Botany . John Churchill, London 1831 ( Google Books ).
  6. ^ Henry Bradley: “Cursed Hebenon” (Or “Hebona”) . In: The Modern Language Review . Vol. 15, No. 1 . Modern Humanities Research Association, January 1920, p. 85-87 , doi : 10.2307 / 3713817 , JSTOR : 3713817 .
  7. ↑ a b K.N. Rao: Botanical survey of Shakespeare - 2nd Chennai Online. (Archive version) ( Memento from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ William Shakespeare, Christoph Martin Wieland (transl.): Hamlet, Prince of Denmark . Project Gutenberg-DE . Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  9. ^ William Shakespeare: Willhelm Shakespears plays . New improved edition. tape 8 . Mannheim 1778, p. 53 .
  10. ^ William Shakespeare: Shakespeare's dramatic works . tape 3 . Georg Reimer, Berlin 1867, p. 360 .
  11. ^ William Shakespeare: Shakespear's dramatic works . tape 13 . Göschen, Leipzig 1826, p. 40 ( Google Books ).
  12. ^ William Shakespeare: W. Shakspeare's dramatic works . tape 1 . Rieger, Stuttgart 1838, p. 250 .
  13. ^ William Shakespeare: Hamlet . 3. Edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-12483-0 , pp. 65 .
  14. ↑ William Shakespeare: Shakespeare's collected dramatic works . 8th edition. tape 11 . Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig, p. 24 (approx. 1860, translated from English by Friedrich Köhler).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 28, 2012 .