Notes

1.1] Cf. Claudius in Measure for Measure, III.i.117-31 (on his immanent execution for fornication):

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clot; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and uncertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, [penury], and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

2.1] Cf. Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i.155-64 (in an allusion to Elizabeth I):

That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd. A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by [the] west,
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon,
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

3.1] Cf. the exchange of Viola and Orsino in Twelfth Night, II.iv.107-15:

[Viola] My father had a daughter lov'd a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
[Orsino] And what's her history?
[Viola] A blank, my lord; she never told her love,
But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud
Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sate like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

Other poems by Phoebe Cary