It’s the
quoted phrase – “nests of spicery” – that triggers envy in this writer. What is
a nest? A shelter for offspring. And “spicery”? Perhaps an aromatic container
for spices. Combined, the two words evoke the soothing, comfortable charm of
Lamb, like a warm, fragrant house at Christmas. But why the quotation marks?
Where did Gilfillan find his sweet-scented allusion? It’s from Act IV, Scene 4 of
Richard III, in which Elizabeth says,
“But thou didst kill my children,” and Richard (Duke of Gloucester) replies:
“But in your
daughter’s womb I bury them:
Where in
that nest of spicery they shall breed
Selves of
themselves, to your recomforture.”
This suggests
that the “nest of spicery” is the uterus, Richard’s intentions are hardly
benign (the daughter is his niece), and the image is disturbing. But is Shakespeare
anatomically confused? I consulted Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy (1955), where things get spicier. Here’s the
entry for “nest of spicery”: “The pudenda and the circumambient hair.” More anatomical
confusion. The OED makes no reference
to Shakespeare’s complete phrase but defines spicery as “spices” or “spice shop.”
It appears Thomas Wolfe got the message. While searching for the phrase online
I came upon his use of it in Of Time and
the River (1935).
By the way, though
Gilfillan’s prose can get a little fulsome and overheated, he does understand and appreciate
Lamb. Later in his portrait he writes:
“He shunned
aerial heights of speculation, and vertigo raptures of passion; he cut no
Gordian knots; he winked hard at all abstruse questions; he babbled not about
green fields; he detested politics; he had small sympathies with the spirit and
literature of his age; but he sat still in his study, with Ben Jonson and
Webster, or he puffed out poetry from his inseparable pipe . . .”
1 comment:
It is the Phoenix that builds a nest of spicery for its grave and womb of its rebirth, I'm surprised if Partridge didn't mention that, as one bird of another.
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