I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to * * * * three thousand dollars a year.
Measure for Measure, Act I., Sc. II.
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility. As You Like It, Act II., Sc. III.
If we two be one, and thou play false, I do digest the poison of thy flesh. Comedy of Errors, Act II., Sc. II.
Consumptions sow In hollow bones of men; strike their sharp shins, And mar men’s spurring. Crack the lawyer’s voice, That he may never more false title plead, Nor sound his quillets shrilly: hoar the flamen, That scolds against the quality of flesh, And not believes himself: down with the nose, Down with it flat; take the bridge quite away, Of him that, his particular to foresee, Smells from the general weal: make curl’d pate ruffians bald; And let the unscarr’d braggarts of the war Derive some pain from you. Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.
The symptoms of secondary and tertiary syphilis are accurately expressed in this curse of Timon’s. Leprosy is referred to in the sentence “hoar the flamen,” or in other words, make white the priest. Shakespeare here shows a very fine point by using these most dreaded of all diseases: leprosy, syphilis, and consumption—maladies that are hereditary, incurable, and contagious. They are certainly lasting, as he wishes the curse to be.
A pox on ’t!
A common expression scattered through many of his plays.
A man can no more separate age and covetousness than he can part young limbs and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other.
Henry IV—2d, Act I., Sc. II.