These allusions all occur in scenes 2 and 3 of the first Act; in the latter also Iago promises Roderigo that Desdemona shall soon be to Othello “bitter as coloquintida.” At the end of this play Othello describes his “subdued eyes dropping tears as fast as the Arabian trees their medicinal gum.” Autolycus refers to aqua vitæ as a restorative in the “Winter’s Tale” (Act IV., Sc. 3), as does the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” when she finds her mistress dead (Act IV., Sc. 5). The “popinjay” takes snuff in “Henry IV.” (part I., Act I., Sc. 3), Cleopatra calls for mandragora to drink “that I might sleep out this great gap of time my Antony is away” (“Ant. and Cleop.,” Act I., Sc. 5). “Not poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,” said Iago, shall medicine Othello against the poison he has given him (“Othello,” Act III., Sc. 3). “Sleepy drinks” are mentioned in the “Winter’s Tale,” (Act I., Sc. 1), and in the same play (“Winter’s Tale,” Act II., Sc. 1) Shakespeare uses the word “land-damn,” which some of his commentators have been disposed to identify with laudanum. The King of Sicily grossly insults his wife, Hermione, declaring her to be an adultress, Antigonus warmly defends her and assures the King that he has been “abused by some putters-on who will be damn’d for’t,” and he adds, “Would I knew the villain, I would land-damn him.” The idea is that this may be a misprint for laudanum, meaning, “I would poison him.” It must be added that this explanation does not find much favour, and perhaps it is rather far-fetched. It is mentioned by Stevens as having been proposed by Dr. Farmer, but Furness thinks that Stevens was poking fun at the solemn nonsense of his learned friend. But the other interpretations are not much better. There is, it appears, an old dialect word “lan-dan” which meant following a man with kettles and other rough music. Another suggested meaning is an association with an old Saxon word (hland) for urine, conveying the notion that the villain is to be made ill by a suppression of urine. Both these explanations seem ludicrously insufficient to express the anger of the speaker. Damn him up with land, that is, bury him alive, is gruesome enough, but this is an obscure way of expressing the proposal. Johnson disposes of the term by the theory that it was “a word which caprice brought into fashion, and reason and grammar drove irrevocably away. It has also been assumed, and this looks likely, that the punctuation has got misplaced and that the sentence should read “I would--Lord damn him.”