Quotations and Authors:
FORD. I beseech you, heartily, some of you go home with me
The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare, William 1597
to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; I will
show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go; so shall
you, Master Page; and you, Sir Hugh.
SHALLOW. Well, fare you well; we shall have the freer
wooing at Master Page’s. Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENDER
CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon. Exit RUGBY
HOST. Farewell, my hearts; I will to my honest knight
Falstaff, and drink canary with him. Exit HOST
FORD. [Aside] I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with
him. I’ll make him dance. Will you go, gentles?
ALL. Have with you to see this monster. Exeunt
SIR TOBY.
The Twelfth Night Shakespeare, William 1602
O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary: When did I see thee so put
down?
SIR ANDREW.
Never in your life, I think, unless you see canary put me down.
Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary
man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm
to my wit.
Canary in Shakespeare (Note: also in reference to a style of dancing, quandary).
And for the whole year through, at every place,
The Alchemist Jonson, Ben 1610
Where there is play, present him with the chair;
The best attendance, the best drink; sometimes
Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing;
The purest linen, and the sharpest knife,
The partridge next his trencher: and somewhere
The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty.
The first that broke silence was good old Ben,
Poems Suckling, John 1646
Prepar’d before with Canary wine,
And he told them plainly he deserv’d the Bayes,
For his were calld Works, where others were but Plaies.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern Keats, John 1819
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood 10
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
Canary in Keats.
“Master Ellis,” he said, “y’are for vengeance–well it becometh you!–but your poor brother o’ the greenwood, that had never lands to lose nor friends to think upon, looketh rather, for his poor part, to the profit of the thing. He had liever a gold noble and a pottle of canary wine than all the vengeances in purgatory.“
…
But see,” he added, “this poor shrew begins a little to revive. A little good canary will comfort me the heart of it.”
…
And so saying, the knight filled himself a horn of canary, and pledged his ward in dumb show.
The Black Arrow Stevenson, Robert Louis 1888
Canary in Stevenson.
“The cellar is well nigh empty,” said Nigel. “There are two firkins of
small beer and a tun of canary. How can we set such drink before the
King and his court?”…
Each new course, heralded by a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar’s heads, enarmed and endored with gilt tusks and flaming mouths, were followed by wondrous pasties molded to the shape of ships, castles and other devices with sugar seamen or soldiers who lost their own bodies in their fruitless defense against the hungry attack. Finally came the great nef, a silver vessel upon wheels laden with fruit and sweetmeats which rolled with its luscious cargo down the line of guests. Flagons of Gascony, of Rhine wine, of Canary and of Rochelle were held in readiness by the attendants; but the age, though luxurious, was not drunken, and the sober habits of the Norman had happily prevailed over the license of those Saxon banquets where no guest might walk from the table without a slur upon his host. Honor and hardihood go ill with a shaking hand or a blurred eye.
Sir Nigel Doyle, Arthur Conan 1906
Canary in Doyle.