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Shakespeare Descants
on letter "A" foods

Almond

Romeo and Juliet, I,5:
FIRST SERVINGMAN, preparing for the masked ball: Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane. Thanks to James Eimont for the citation.

Troilus and Cressida, V, 2:
THERSITES: Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!

Apple

Henry IV, part I, III, 3:
FALSTAFF: Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle? Why my skin hangs about me like an like an old lady's loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-john.

Henry IV, part 2, V, 3:
SHALLOW: Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year's pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth: come, cousin Silence: and then to bed.

Henry V, III, 7:
ORLEANS: Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crushed like rotten apples! You may as well say, that's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

Henry VIII, V, 4:
PORTER: These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but the tribulation of Tower-hill, or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.

The Taming of the Shrew, I, 1:
HORTENSIO: Faith, as you say, there's small choice in rotten apples.

The Taming of the Shrew, IV, 2:
BIONDELLO [Aside]: As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all one.

The Taming of the Shrew, IV, 4:
PETRUCHIO: Thy gown? why, ay: come, tailor, let us see't. O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here? What's this? a sleeve? 'tis like a demi-cannon: What, up and down, carved like an apple-tart?

Love's Labour's Lost, IV, 2:
HOLOFERNES: The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

Love's Labour's Lost, V, 2:
BIRON: Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady's foot by the squier, And laugh upon the apple of her eye?

A Midsummer's Night Dream, III, 2: OBERON: Flower of this purple dye, Hit with Cupid's archery, Sink in apple of his eye.

The Merchant of Venice, I, 3: ANTONIO: Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Twelfth Night, I, 5:
MALVOLIO: Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a cooling when 'tis almost an apple: 'tis with him in standing water, between boy and man.

Twelfth Night, V, 1:
ANTONIO: How have you made division of yourself? An apple, cleft in two, is not more twin Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 2:
SIR HUGH EVANS: Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter; for it is a 'oman that altogether's acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page: and the letter is, to desire and require her to solicit your master's desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you, be gone: I will make an end of my dinner; there's pippins and cheese to come.

The Tempest, II, 1:
SEBASTIAN: I think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it his son for an apple.

King Lear, I, 5:
FOOL: Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.

Sonnet 93:
How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, if thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!

Apricot

Richard II, III, 4 :
GARD: Goe binde thou vp yond dangling Apricocks, Which like vnruly Children, make their Syre Stoupe with oppression of their prodigall weight: Giue some supportance to the bending twigges. Goe thou, and like an Executioner Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprayes, That looke too loftie in our Common-wealth: All must be euen, in our Gouernment. You thus imploy'd, I will goe root away The noysome Weedes, that without profit sucke The Soyles fertilitie from wholesome flowers.