- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
An excerpt from a blog comment you might not have noticed:
twiztidgrandpa said...
Full Fathom Five (#1) -- The poem murderer recites as the 55-gallon drum containing the latest victim's body sinks beneath the waves is a parody on a passage from Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act 1, Scene II. he recites:
Full fathom five the widow lies,
And of her bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were her eyes;
Nothing of her now doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring her knell.
Hark! now I hear them,--ding-dong, bell."
In the play, Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples, thinks his father was killed in the shipwreck which lands them on Prospero's island of exile at the beginning. Ariel, a spirit, echoes Ferdinand's grief with:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell."