<span title="IMPORTANT!!!shakespeare!!?">IMPORTANT!!!shakespeare!!...</span>

Question

the quote " the caterpillar that eats the realm" or "the catterpillar that feeds on the realm" is from what play? and who said the sentence and who was mean by it?

thnx a lot!

Answer 1

There are at least a couple of quotations you may be thinking of.   One is Bolingbroke&#039;s reference to the enemies of the realm as

&quot;The caterpillars of the commonwealth,Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away,&quot;

in  Richard II; Act 2, Scene 3, lines 166-167.

Another quote in the same play, in connection with Richard&#039;s administration of the realm, is in the garden scene, where one of the gardener&#039;s men has just complained that while they, &quot;in the compass of a pale / Keep law and form and due proportion, / Showing as in a model our firm estate,&quot;

the

&quot;sea-walled garden, the whole land,

Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok&#039;d up,

Her fruit-trees all unprun d, her hedges ruin&#039;d,

Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

Swarming with caterpillars&quot;    

(Richard II; Act 3, Scene 4, lines 40-47)