Notes. In the sole extant copy, this verse runs immediately after “I neade noe Trophies, to adorne my hearse”. Although these lines clearly continue in the same vein as the more-widely circulated epitaph, both their language and the scribe’s separation of these lines from the preceding verse suggest that this best is best considered as a discrete poem.

A proud cuckold tollit cornua.1

I would not have my wife exalt my horne.

Keepe on your Masque & hide your eye

For with behoulding it I dye,

for yf your piercing eyes I see

Their worse than Basiliskes2 to mee.

Source. Huntington MS HM 166, p. 122

Q5

¹   tollit cornua: “lifts his horns”. <back>

²   Basiliskes: reference to the mythical serpent that could kill by its look. <back>