“I had as lief Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for a copper nose.”
Plate 14
Life as a Theatre, from Boissards Theatrum 1596.
As Whitney’s pictorial illustration represents them, Death and Cupid are flying in mid-air, and discharging their arrows from the clouds. Confining the description to Cupid, this is exactly the action in one of the scenes of the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act ii. sc. 1, l. 155, vol. ii. p. 216). The passage was intended to flatter Queen Elizabeth; it is Oberon who speaks,—
“That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,