> If you wont, I will:
>
> http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/shroud.htm
>
> Roger
I *think* the caption -- "John Donne in his shroud, painted a few weeks
before his death" -- is slightly wrong. My memory is that Donne posed for a
sculptor, who later carved his efiggy on his tomb (upright in a wall-niche,
no doggy footstools, but). Donne then, still dressed in his shroud (but
presumably wearing undergarments) trogged off to Paul's Cross or wherever,
preached Death's Duel (called by the gawping onlookers, "Doctor Donne's
death sermon), and returned home to die.
It would have been a bit of an anticlimax if he hadn't. Died, that is.
Pretty promptly.
The illustration (again, I think) is an engraving of the effigy, used as the
frontispiece of the Sermons, published by his son in about 1640. (Would
that we all had children who exhibited such filial piety. Though to be
frank, Donne's son seems to have been more interested in the money he could
make from Dear Dead Dad's published sermons.)
The above is top-of-my-head, but the details will be in the standard life of
Donne by R.C.Bald. I'll check this if anyone desperately wants confirmation
of what I've said above, from memory.
Otherwise, lazy ex-scholar that I am, I won't bother.
The Other R.
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