Falstaff
I'm currently reading the fictional biography of Sir John Falstaff - Shakespeare's wonderfully degenerate knight who liked to play robbers and drink with Prince Hal and hide in womens' laundry baskets.
I might be biased because Henry IV (Falstaff's debut) remains my favorite Shakespeare play, but really, this book is quite delicious. Observe:
[Molyneux] had married a rich widow in the expectation of her dying. When she did not oblige, despite him leaving her out of doors in all weathers, Molyneux consulted an apothecary in search of a safe poison. 'The best poison lies there between your legs,' the apothecary told him. 'Give it to her seven times a night. No woman can stand that. In seven months she'll be dead. The perfect murder.' Poor Nick. I bought the Boar's Head from him some six months after he embarked upon this master plan. He lay absolutely knackered in an upper room, covered in flakes of sweat, twitching and quaking. When I tried to shake hands with him, he yelped and pulled the sheets over his head as though I'd meant something improper. His wife meanwhile was the life and soul of the endless party downstairs, only popping up to see him every hour on the hour between midnight and dawn, tripping upstairs and down in a trance of delight. Nick's last words to me were, 'The bitch doesn't know it, but she's only got a month to live.'
lolz
On another note, I was looking up some dates from this period, and got completely waylaid on this morbidly fascinating (genuine) historical antectode of Henry V surviving an arrow to the face. Still investigating. Perhaps more on that later.
I might be biased because Henry IV (Falstaff's debut) remains my favorite Shakespeare play, but really, this book is quite delicious. Observe:
[Molyneux] had married a rich widow in the expectation of her dying. When she did not oblige, despite him leaving her out of doors in all weathers, Molyneux consulted an apothecary in search of a safe poison. 'The best poison lies there between your legs,' the apothecary told him. 'Give it to her seven times a night. No woman can stand that. In seven months she'll be dead. The perfect murder.' Poor Nick. I bought the Boar's Head from him some six months after he embarked upon this master plan. He lay absolutely knackered in an upper room, covered in flakes of sweat, twitching and quaking. When I tried to shake hands with him, he yelped and pulled the sheets over his head as though I'd meant something improper. His wife meanwhile was the life and soul of the endless party downstairs, only popping up to see him every hour on the hour between midnight and dawn, tripping upstairs and down in a trance of delight. Nick's last words to me were, 'The bitch doesn't know it, but she's only got a month to live.'
lolz
On another note, I was looking up some dates from this period, and got completely waylaid on this morbidly fascinating (genuine) historical antectode of Henry V surviving an arrow to the face. Still investigating. Perhaps more on that later.