Footnotes

• The tale of Pyramis and Thisbe is a doomed love story, recorded by the Roman poet Ovid (43BE-17AD), in Book IV of his Metamorphoses, a poetic compendium of myths about living beings undergoing magical transformations.
  
  Set in ancient Babylon, Pyramis and Thisbe were a boy and girl, who lived next door to each other and grew up falling in love. They were forbidden by their parents to wed due to family rivalry. Nonetheless, each day the young lovers would communicate through a tiny crack in the wall that separated their two homes. In desperation, they planned to run away, arranging to meet secretly at Ninus' Tomb, (an ancient king of Babylon), under a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first, but upon encountering a lioness, bloody from a recent kill, she fled to a nearby cave, unwittingly leaving behind her veil. The lioness, upon finding the veil, plays with and mutilates it. When Pyramis arrives, he finds the blood soaked veil, and instinctively believes the lioness has killed his beloved. Blaming himself for having left Thisbe waiting alone, Pyramis kills himself by falling on his sword. Thisbe, eager to explain why she had left, returns to find Pyramis' dead body lying under the mulberry tree, his spurting blood having turned the white fruits red. In grief Thisbe stabs herself with Pyramis' sword. The gods listen to Thisbe's lament and forever change the colour of the mulberry fruits, to deepest, darkest red, to honour their forbidden love.
  
  The Pyramis and Thisbe plot appears twice in Shakespeare's plays, most notably in Romeo and Juliet, and again in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as a play within a play, for the entertainment of Theseus and the Lady Hippolyta.
  
  Exhibited: Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, circa 2005.

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Category: Furniture / Oak Furniture

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