A few quotations on abortion, and some others that are intimately related to obstetrics, remain.
If ever he have child, abortive be it, Prodigious, and untimely brought to light, Whose ugly and unnatural aspect May fright the hopeful mother at the view. Richard III., Act I., Sc. II.
Why should I joy in any abortive birth? Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I., Sc. I.
Truth is truth: large length of seas and shores Between my father and my mother lay,— And I have heard my father speak * * * That this, my mother’s son, was none of his; And, if he were, he came into the world Full fourteen weeks before the course of time. King John, Act I., Sc. I.
Shakespeare has interwoven some of his family history here, and made the advent of Philip, the Bastard, correspond exactly to the untimely birth of his eldest daughter Susanna, who appeared only five and a half months after his marriage—“full fourteen weeks before the course of time.” Later on in the play we find the following:
Your brother is legitimate, Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him.
—thus furnishing proof of legitimacy in such cases.
She is, something before her time, deliver’d. * * * A daughter; and a goodly babe, Lusty, and like to live. Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. II.
O pray God, the fruit of her womb miscarry. Henry IV—2d, Act V., Sc. IV.
She had also snatch’d a moment since her marriage To bear a son and heir—and one miscarriage. Byron—Don Juan, Canto XIV., Verse LVI.