A VIRTUOUS WIDOW

Is the palm-tree, that thrives not after the supplanting of her husband.  For her children’s sake she first marries; for she married that she might have children; and for their sakes she marries no more.  She is like the purest gold, only employed for princes’ medals:  she never receives but one man’s impression.  The largest jointure moves her not, titles of honour cannot sway her.  To change her name were (she thinks) to commit a sin should make her ashamed of her husband’s calling.  She thinks she hath travelled all the world in one man; the rest of her time, therefore, she directs to heaven.  Her main superstition is, she thinks her husband’s ghost would walk, should she not perform his will.  She would do it were there no Prerogative Court.  She gives much to pious uses, without any hope to merit by them; and as one diamond fashions another, so is she wrought into works of charity, with the dust or ashes of her husband.  She lives to see herself full of time; being so necessary for earth, God calls her not to heaven till she be very aged, and even then, though her natural strength fail her, she stands like an ancient pyramid, which, the less it grows to man’s eye, the nearer it reaches to heaven.  This latter chastity of hers is more grave and reverend than that ere she was married, for in it is neither hope, nor longing, nor fear, nor jealousy.  She ought to be a mirror for our youngest dames to dress themselves by, when she is fullest of wrinkles.  No calamity can now come near her, for in suffering the loss of her husband she accounts all the rest trifles.  She hath laid his dead body in the worthiest monument that can be:  she hath buried it in her one heart.  To conclude, she is a relic, that, without any superstition in the world, though she will not be kissed, yet may be reverenced.

AN ORDINARY WIDOW

Is like the herald’s hearse-cloth; she serves to many funerals, with a very little altering the colour.  The end of her husband begins in tears, and the end of her tears begins in a husband.  She uses to cunning women to know how many husbands she shall have, and never marries without the consent of six midwives.  Her chiefest pride is in the multitude of her suitors, and by them she gains; for one serves to draw on another, and with one at last she shoots out another, as boys do pellets in eldern guns.  She commends to them a single life, as horse-coursers do their jades, to put them away.  Her fancy is to one of the biggest of the Guard, but knighthood makes her draw in in a weaker bow.  Her servants or kinsfolk are the trumpeters that summon any to his combat.  By them she gains much credit, but loseth it again in the old proverb, Fama est mendax.  If she live to be thrice married, she seldom fails to cozen her second husband’s creditors.  A churchman she dare not venture upon, for she hath