I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague than kiss one of you fasting.
A soldier is twitted with serving his master:
As witches do their serviceable spirits,
Even with thy prodigal blood.
An adulterous couple get this curse:
Like mistletoe on sear elms spent by weather,
Let him cleave to her, and both rot together.
A bravo is asked:
Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood,
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,
And yet to prosper?
It is dangerous to extract philosophy of life from any dramatist. Yet Webster so often returns to dark and doleful meditations, that we may fairly class him among constitutional pessimists. Men, according to the grimness of his melancholy, are:
Only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruined, yield no echo.