Spam & Scams1 min ago
Hamlet -- ear poison
5 Answers
I have always enjoyed 'Hamlet' but only recently have I stopped to think about the way Claudius poisoned Hamlet's father -- by putting a poison in his ear as he slept.
What sort of poison would this be and would it do the deadly damage by passing through the Eustachian tube?
What sort of poison would this be and would it do the deadly damage by passing through the Eustachian tube?
Answers
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.I suppose it's worth saying that in Shakespeare's day, 'accuracy' wasn't an issue the way it is now. The days, if you set a film in 1958 and show a car that wasn't made until 1959, it'll soon appear in a book of bloopers. But people were less nitpicky then. Shakespeare mentions chiming clocks in Julius Caesar, as I recall; the Romans didn't have them, but his audience simply wouldn't have cared. My guess is he might well have heard of some poison that works via ears, but wouldn't have done any research whatever to see if it existed.