“All’s Well that Ends Well.”
“As lean as a rake.” So in “Coriolanus” (i. 1), one of the citizens says: “Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes.” So Spenser, in his “Fairy Queen” (bk. ii. can. 11):
“His body leane and meagre as a rake.”
This proverb is found in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” (i. 289):
“Al so lene was his hors as is a rake.”
“As thin as a whipping-post” is another proverb of the same kind.
“As mad as a March hare” (“The Two Noble Kinsmen,” iii. 5). We may compare the expression “hare-brained:” “1 Henry IV.” (v. 2).
“As sound as a bell.” So in “Much Ado about Nothing” (iii. 2), Don Pedro says of Benedick: “He hath a heart as sound as a bell.”
“As the bell clinketh, so the fool thinketh.” This proverb is indirectly alluded to in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 2), in the previous passage, where Don Pedro says of Benedick that “He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks.”
Another form of the same proverb is: “As the fool thinks, the bell tinks.”[863]