_Urns and odours bring away;
Vapours, sighs, darken the day;
Our dole more deadly looks than dying;
Balms and gums and heavy cheers,
Sacred vials filled with tears,
And clamours through the wild air flying._
_Come, all sad and solemn shows
That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes;
We convent naught else but woes.
We convent naught else but woes._
_Urns and odours bring away; Vapours, sighs, darken the day; Our dole more deadly looks than dying; Balms and gums and heavy cheers, Sacred vials filled with tears, And clamours through the wild air flying._ _Come, all sad and solemn shows That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes; We convent naught else but woes. We convent naught else but woes._
In other words: _urns and odours bring away; vapours, sighs, darken the day; our dole more deadly looks than dying;
_urns and odours bring
This funeral path brings to your household’s grave.
Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.
This funeral path brings to your household’s grave. Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.
In other words: this funeral path brings to your household’s grave. joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.
this funeral path brings
The Third Queen's couplet — 'This world's a city full of straying streets, / And death's the market-place where each one meets' — arrives at the end of the play's opening movement with the force of a door closing. It is, first, a beautiful image: the city as maze, death as the central plaza where all the wandering streets finally open out. But it is also a structural announcement. The entire play is about people taking wildly different paths — the cousins who were about to leave Thebes and instead went to war; the Jailer's Daughter who freed a prisoner she loved; Arcite who disguised himself to stay near the woman who would be his death. Every one of those straying streets leads to the same marketplace. The couplet is spoken by the most minor character in the scene — a queen we have barely heard from — but it is the play's thesis. Watch for how many times the play returns to this image of converging paths.
And this to yours.
And this to yours.
In other words: and this to yours.
and this to yours
Yours this way. Heavens lend
A thousand differing ways to one sure end.
Yours this way. Heavens lend A yousand differing ways to one sure end.
In other words: yours this way. heavens lend a yousand differing ways to one sure end.
yours this way heavens
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place where each one meets.
This world’s a city full of straying streets, And death’s the market-place whbefore each one meets.
In other words: this world’s a city full of straying streets, and death’s the market-place whbefore each one meets.
this world’s city full
The Reckoning
The briefest scene in the act, and one of the most formally perfect: a funeral procession, a song of mourning, three queens who spent the entire first scene united in grief now separating forever to their individual losses. The Third Queen's final couplet about the city of straying streets and death's marketplace is the play's first statement of its deep theme — that all the play's different paths (love, honour, friendship, war) lead to the same destination.
If this happened today…
Three women who met at a support group for war widows have accomplished what they came to do — the bodies of their husbands have finally been found and repatriated. At the airport they hug and exchange numbers but know they probably won't call. One says: 'We came from different places. We end up in the same place.' They go through separate doors.