Results found: 2

Search results

Sort By:

Limit search:

The Injurious and Curative Powers of Herbs: Shakespeare in Herb Gardens

100%

Szwach A.

Studia Historyczne

2017

vol. 60

issue 2 (238)

47-56

For Galen, the best physician was the one who was able to treat his patients by means other than the knife, particularly through diet and drugs. The fact that basic knowledge of pharmacology was not required came under severe criticism in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. To remedy this situation, herb gardens were established at universities. Some physicians wrote voluminous new herbals based both on the close study of classical pharmacological works, observations and experiments. William Turner (1508–1568), Henry Lyte (1529–1607), John Gerard (1545–1650) and John Parkinson (1567–1650) were the essential figures who established English herbal tradition. This phenomenon was not entirely alien to Shakespeare. The study of tragedies, as presented in this paper, is sufficient to realise how numerous references to both healing and poisonous plants are made in Shakespearean plays.

Women and Insanity in English Renaissance Drama

63%

Szwach A., Wojciechowska B.

Studia Historica Gedanensia

2024

vol. 15

issue 2

197-204

The following article presents how in the sixteenth century England, thanks to the increased awarness of the problems with mental disorders, the stories of madness entered the world of Renaissance drama and appeared in the works of numerous writers. As early modern culture and literature made attempts to understand female melancholy or insanity, particular focus is given to the characters of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Duchess in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. The thorough analysis of the texts shows that contrary to the then common belief that all women’s illness and irrationality derived from the womb, those were, too a great degree, social constraints which affected women and pushed them into insanity. Oppressive, male dominant and chaotic socjety either pushed women into a state of complete madness, which subsequently results in death or it is the madness, confusion and chaos around them that was the cause of their death.

Refine search results

1 Studia Historica Gedanensia

1 Studia Historyczne

2 Szwach A.

1 Wojciechowska B.

1 2024

1 2017

Search results

The Injurious and Curative Powers of Herbs: Shakespeare in Herb Gardens

Women and Insanity in English Renaissance Drama