Literature

Why Crown of Weeds?

King Lear, broken, and driven from his home, stands on a heath with his fool in a driving storm. In this broken state he really sees one of his destitute subjects for the firsts time:

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.”

― William Shakespeare, King Lear

We bear this same ruined, beautiful crown.