Gilding The Lily

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

Re your comment:. “To ‘gild the lilly’ means to make something already beautiful even more ornate or beautiful unnecessarily.”

There’s been a curious drift in the phrasing of this idiom. As Shakespeare coined it, the notion of a certain excess going on in the play [King John] was reproached by one of the characters as, in these exact words:

“. . . to gild refined gold, to paint the lilly,

. . . is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” [Act III, Scene 4; emphasis mine]

–a metaphor and moral which makes a lot more sense, when you think about it. Shakespeare’s point is that simply adding a veneer of more of the same, to what’s already there, is pretty useless.

I have no idea how the subjects of “gilding” and “painting” got switched around in common parlance.

Yours for excruciatingly close attention to sources,

Update From another reader:

Dear Jonah,

Your reader had the lines correct, but the act and scene wrong. It’s actually Act 4, scene 2. The entire attribute opens the Act and for purposes of clarification runs thus;

KING JOHN

Here once again we sit, once again crown’d,

And looked upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.

PEMBROKE

This ‘once again,’ but that your highness pleased,

Was once superfluous: you were crown’d before,

And that high royalty was ne’er pluck’d off,

The faiths of men ne’er stained with revolt;

Fresh expectation troubled not the land

With any long’d-for change or better state.

SALISBURY

Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,

To guard a title that was rich before,

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.