Friday, February 14, 2014

Ben Jonson on abortion

Oh, you live at court,
And there's both loss of time and loss of sport
In a great belly.  Write then on thy womb
'Of the not born yet buried, here's the tomb.'

     Ben Jonson, "To Fine Lady Would-Be", "the court lady who's taken an abortion pill", as quoted by Brian Vickers in "At feud with sin," a review of the apparently magnificent Cambridge edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, ed. David Bevington, Martin Butler, & Ian Donaldson, 7 vols. (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012), in the Times literary supplement, January 24, 2014, p. 5 (pp. 3-5).

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