The Currier Museum of Art is also hosting a rare First Folio, startingВ April 9. The small showВ joins a horde of Shakespearean happenings around the world this year - marking 400 year since his deathВ -В fromВ the display of his only surviving handwritten manuscript, toВ a digital recreation of the 18th-century Shakespeare Gallery. Petersen curated ShakespeareвЂ™s Potions,В on view at the Currier Museum of Art, whichВ pairsВ historic herbals from itsВ library with film stills, showing two waysВ of visualizing the potions. ShakespeareвЂ™s audience would have understood the basic qualities of many of the plants he referenced but certainly, as evidenced by his writing, he employed these plants and herbs in specifically effective and atmospheric ways.вЂќ вЂњWomen were expected to plant and tend their own gardens complete with herbs to address basic healthcare needs of the household. вЂњInput from the emerging professions of physicians and вЂbarber surgeonsвЂ™ coexisted with folk medicine, which was familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries,вЂќ 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-basedВ concoctions, and through these rare books we can connect hisВ references toВ remedies of the 16th and 17th century, whether the potentВ sleeping draught consumed by Juliet, or the rosemary вЂњfor remembranceвЂќ perfuming OpheliaвЂ™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, вЂThe herball or Generall historie of plantesвЂ™ (London, 1633), printed by Adam Islip Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers (courtesy Currier Museum of Art Library and Archives)

Pills and potions piano chords