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Chaucer's Physicians: Their Texts, Contexts, And The Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth Penley Skerpan

Quidditas

In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrim Chaucer lists an impressive series of medical authors whom his fellow pilgrim the Physician is supposed to have read. As we continue past the General Prologue, we discover that these writers do not merely embellish the PHysician's claims to a well-rounded medical education: two are actually mentioned in the course of story-telling, though, oddly, not by the Physician, but by the Pardoner and Parson. These two pilgrims' references appear in tales more concerned with spiritual than physical healing and health, and indeed the Parson preaches on the "cure" of sins as a necessary …

"Use And Abuse" In Romeo And Juliet, Maurice Hunt

Quidditas

Near the midpoint of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence formulates an authoritative-sounding concept which seemingly lends itself to interpreting tragedy. Gathering "baleful weeds" and "precious juiced flowers," the Friar states that everything earthly has a virtuous use and a potential abuse:

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.

For naught so vile that on the earth doth live

But too the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, …