“Meat was made for mouths.” Quoted in “Coriolanus” (i. 1).
“Misfortunes seldom come alone.” This proverb is beautifully alluded to by the King in “Hamlet” (iv. 5):
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.”
The French say:[884] “Malheur ne vient jamais seul.”
“More hair than wit” (“Two Gentlemen of Verona,” iii. 2). A well-known old English proverb.
“Mortuo leoni et lepores insultant.” This proverb is alluded to by the Bastard in “King John” (ii. 1), who says to the Archduke of Austria:
“You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.”
“Much water goes by the mill the miller knows not of.” This adage is quoted in “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), by Demetrius:
“more water glideth by the mill
Than wots the miller of.”
“My cake is dough” (“Taming of the Shrew,” v. 1). An obsolete proverb, repeated on the loss of hope or expectation: the allusion being to the old-fashioned way of baking cakes at the embers, when it may have been occasionally the case for a cake to be burned on one side and dough on the other. In a former scene (i. 1) Gremio says: “our cake’s dough on both sides.” Staunton quotes from “The Case is Altered,” 1609: