Afterword

So polyvalent and associative is the term “friend” in early modern English that its most fleeting literary use is analytically rich. To open with an example: in the final act of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the warrior king drops, for a moment, his mask of cruel determination before the impending battle and confides to an attendant that he has begun to loathe what is left of his life: Seyton!—I am sick at heart … I have lived long enough. My way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf, And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have … ¹