‘The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen’ (Twelfth Night, 1.5.32)

Comforting his friend whose wife had recently died, Thomas Allestree warned against the kind of overindulgences in mourning that either limited God’s grace or harked back to Catholicism. He counsels, ‘let her memory be still precious with you, not for adoration (leave that foppery to the Papists) but for imitation’. Here we can recall Feste’s criticism of Olivia’s excessive funereal mourning for her brother.

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