While the grass grows...

In Act 3 Scene 2, Hamlet says "'While the grass grows...' the proverb is something musty."

The actual proverb is:

While the grass grows, the seed starves. 

http://www.special-dictionary.com/proverbs/keywords/grass/


It's # 4 on the list. 

Old Jepthah

Painting of Jepthah, John Everett Millais, 1867

Jepthah asked God to bring him victory over his enemies, the Ammonites. In return, he vowed that "whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD's, and I will offer him up as a burnt offering. (Judges 11:30-31) When he returns home victorious, his only child, a virgin daughter, runs out of the house to meet him. 
"And when he saw her, he rent his clothes, and said, 'Alas, my daughter! you have brought me very low and you have become the cause of great trouble for me, for I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow."(11:35)
His daughter tells him that he must do whatever he has promised to God, but first she asks, " 'Let me alone two months, that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.'
  

The Lament of Jepthah's Daughter, George Elgar Hicks, 1871

"And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year." (11: 37-40)

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, Charleston, SC

Ashley Hall, Magnolia Gardens, Charleston, 1910-1920

Charleston, early 20th century

By the early twentieth century, Charleston seemed more like a medieval city than a modern port. Hogs and dairy cows lived in the alleys and walked the streets, while buzzards provided a primary public sanitation service. The city had no professional fire department or police force. In a city becoming known as “too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash,” Charleston’s elite had little interest in or vision of economic renewal. Most shops and even banks in the city opened in late morning, closed at midday to allow the proprietors to enjoy a long and leisurely three o’clock dinner, then reopened briefly before sundown. Charlestonians had the reputation of being lost in a dreamy contemplation of the past. Grace was unwilling to let the city sleep. He instituted a series of reforms that began its modernization, such as raising taxes to pave roads and build sidewalks. Grace held o ffi ce from 1911 to 1915 and again from 1919 to 1923 . Seeing the city’s potential for tourism, in his second term he saw to it that the city contributed to the building of the Francis Marion Hotel, which still stands on the corner of King and Calhoun streets across from Marion Square. The city finally developed professional police and fire protection and other services. Farm animals disappeared from the streets. But the old elites of the city hated Grace. He lost in 1915 by a handful of votes to Tristram T. Hyde. Armed partisans for Grace and equally well-armed partisans for his opponent showed up at Democratic Party headquarters at the corner of George and King streets. A scuffle over ballots led to a wild shootout. Two ballot boxes were hurled into the street, a Charleston News and Courier reporter was shot and killed, and only intervention by police and local militia ended the violence. Meanwhile, although African Americans lacked any meaningful vote in the early twentieth century, they did more than simply accept the marginal place whites attempted to assign them. Unable to challenge Jim Crow as a social system, they worked to improve their position within it. These efforts planted seeds of resistance that would come to fruition in the civil rights struggle.

 

Bass, Jack. Palmetto State : The Making of Modern South Carolina.

Columbia, SC, USA: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. p 76.

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/baruch/Doc?id=10559535&ppg=93

Copyright © 2009. University of South Carolina Press. All rights reserved.

Charleston

Charleston