40, in Roman numerals. “Into my heart” is part of Housman’s most famous poetry collection, A Shropshire Lad, whose poems are numbered rather than titled.

When he wasn’t dropping some serious rhymes, Housman was a kickass classicist – so Roman numerals seem appropriate here.

Harold Bloom, who lists this among Housman’s best poems, calls these two lines “the epitome of Housman”. The speaker’s contemplating a distant land, but the memories he has of that land – mixed with the wind that physically blows from that direction – are killin' him.

We can tell from the second verse that the “far country” refers to the past, rather than a physical location.

The word “air” here is a pun: it means the wind which is blowing from the land, but it also hints at the meaning of a tune or melody. Housman’s suggesting that what the speaker might be hearing is this poem itself, which is a lyric poem and so a sort of song.

Alternatively, he could just be saying that yon far country has a pollution issue.

Julia is Castruccio’s wife. It later emerges that she’s cheating on him with the Cardinal.

Castruccio is an old man, and a bit of a fool. It later turns out that he’s being cuckolded, as his wife Julia is sleeping with the Cardinal. The cuckolded husband – along with the ‘horns’ which were supposed to grow on his head – was a major theme in 17th century literature.

An irrelevant Lord, friend to the Cardinal. He brings very little to the party.

Through grass to the ground, it slipped away.

A pearl’s made when a piece of grit gets into a mollusc’s shell. There’s nothing more annoying than a bit of grit in your shell, right? So the mollusc secretes calcium carbonate and conchiolin to cover the grit, doing this over and over again until it forms a pearl. The pearl’s therefore of a similar make-up to chalk, making it naturally at home in the chalk downs of England (although the Gawain poet is actually thought to be from the North West).

The whole process – the pearl is created in an oyster’s shell, treasured by the narrator and finally restored to the earth – mimics the words of the Anglican burial service, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, or of Genesis 3:19:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The loss of the pearl is therefore associated with death, but emphasises that death – like the poem itself – is cyclical.

I set her apart, in a class of her own.

Note that the pearl’s called “she”. This anticipates the dream later in the poem, when the pearl’s identified with a woman. Women like pearls.

The usual word for ‘pearl’ in Old English is ‘mere-grot’ (literally ‘sea-atom’), which is actually neuter. It’s where we get the word ‘margarite’, which the Gawain poet uses later in Pearl.

A ‘bout’, in British dialect, is “a fit or turn of illness” (OED). Simone had already had a bout of illness last Saturday – when she didn’t want Mike around – and two weeks before that, as well. So it’s not like it’s just this one time, like Simone claimed.

“Quick snap” is one of Mike’s favourite phrases for ‘immediately’. If it’s quick snap it ought to be fast and easy, just like clicking your fingers.

Word is, the Cardinal of Aragon – that’s right, the same guy we just saw talking with Bosola – told Bosola to do the murder which got him locked up. But that can’t be right, can it? A man of God wouldn’t order a murder … would he???

Oh no wait, this is a Webster play.