Note 5:1 — SOME NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S REPUTATION
Reading edition
I can myself add nothing but suggestions of possible borrowings from Shakespearean diction. In the poem, The Court Burlesqu’d, printed in Samuel Butler’s Remains, the lines—
“This, by a rat behind the curtain Has been o’erheard, some say for certain,”
may be reminiscent of the scene in Hamlet in which Polonius is killed; and in Quarles’ Argalus and Parthenia, the expression “to gild perfection,” which occurs in the 21st line of the first book, seems to echo the passage in King John, “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily,” etc.