Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary.” (Rosemary for remembrance?)
I think that's Shakespeare playing with double and triple images. Yes, rosemary for remembrance, but...wasn't rosemary also one of many herbs used to fend off illness in time of plague? And wasn't it sometimes placed in the hands of the dead?
What I'm getting from that speech--and I may very well be wrong--is that the lives of mad beggars are, to some extent, a daily crucifixion that should be remembered, and that even as society would like to ward off the beggars and all they represent, in a way, they protect society by providing people for the more fortunate to be charitable towards. (Though personally, I think that the beggars would probably rather be the charitable ones than the ones inspiring charity.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-04-26 08:25 am (UTC)I think that's Shakespeare playing with double and triple images. Yes, rosemary for remembrance, but...wasn't rosemary also one of many herbs used to fend off illness in time of plague? And wasn't it sometimes placed in the hands of the dead?
What I'm getting from that speech--and I may very well be wrong--is that the lives of mad beggars are, to some extent, a daily crucifixion that should be remembered, and that even as society would like to ward off the beggars and all they represent, in a way, they protect society by providing people for the more fortunate to be charitable towards. (Though personally, I think that the beggars would probably rather be the charitable ones than the ones inspiring charity.)