I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d sweet maid, And not have strew’d thy grave.

May 21, 2020erainbowd

Is this bride-bed be-decking an English tradition? Or a Danish one?
I don’t feel like I’ve seen a lot of this in European films – at least among the more Germanic, Scandinavian, English folks.

It’s hard to imagine a queen – like – a very English queen, strewing flowers on her daughter-in-law’s bed.
Like, if the current Queen Elizabeth had gone into her son’s bedroom to decorate it for Lady Diana. It’s just…unlikely.

But in cultures with a more expressive attitude toward sex, I don’t find it quite as hard to imagine. I can imagine a Queen that Isabelle Allende dreamed up doing some bridal bed flower strewing.
Earlier periods were sometimes freer about such things in some ways – and Gertrude and Hamlet are both fairly frank about sex in unexpected moments. Like this one.