Shakespeare on Flowers

To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
King John (4.2.11-17)

Romeo and Juliet

Nurses play central role in this most favorite of Shakespeare's plays.

JULIET
Ay me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands?

Nurse
Ah, well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!
We are undone, lady, we are undone!
Alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead!

A quote from Pericles

CLEON
Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,I'ld give it to undo the deed. O lady,Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princessTo equal any single crown o' the earthI' the justice of compare! O villain Leonine!Whom thou hast poison'd too:If thou hadst drunk to him, 't had been a kindnessBecoming well thy fact: what canst thou sayWhen noble Pericles shall demand his child?

DIONYZA
That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,To foster it, nor ever to preserve.She died at night; I'll say so. Who can cross it?Unless you play the pious innocent,And for an honest attribute cry out'She died by foul play.'

Sunday (or Saturday in the U.S.A)

Where nursing is mentioned in Shakespeare:

SONNET 22
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.