Laura Fairlie, innocent victim of the machinations of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Tosco. The former marries her for her fortune, then imprisons her in an insane asylum, and announces her death. In the end she becomes a widow, and weds Walter Harbright, who has long loved her.—Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White.
Laura and Petrarch. Some say La belle Laure was only an hypothetical name used by the poet to hang the incidents of his life and love on. If a real person, it was Laura de Noves, the wife of Hugues de Sade, of Avignon, and she died of the plague in 1348.
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
Byron, Don Juan, iii. 8 (1820).
Laurana, the lady-love of Prince Parismus of Bohemia.—Emanuel Foord, The History of Parismus (1598).
Laureate of the Gentle Craft, Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet of Nuremberg. (See Twelve Wise Masters).
Laurence (Friar), the good friar who promises to marry Romeo and Juliet. He supplies Juliet with the sleeping draught, to enable her to quit her home without arousing scandal or suspicion. (See Lawrence).—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597).
Laurence, baby-boy whose brief life is the theme of Rossiter Johnson’s poem bearing that caption:
“The newness of love at his coming,